Turkey’s ANKA-3 Flying Wing Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle Emerges by Tyler Rogoway
March 19, 2023
Introduction:
(The Drive) Just a day after Turkey's home-grown stealthy fighter aircraft was seen in full prior to its official rollout, yet another ambitious Turkish air combat aircraft has officially broken cover.
The Turkish Aircraft Industries (TAI) ANKA-3 MIUS (which stands for National Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle System in Turkish) is a low-observable flying wing unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV). The aircraft is roughly the size of a light fighter and is designed as a survivable, relatively long-endurance, strike, surveillance, and electronic warfare platform. Suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses are also said to be key intended roles for the ANKA-3. It's thought that ANKA-3 is envisioned to work in conjunction with Turkey's manned TF-X stealthy fighter for certain mission applications.
ANKA-3, which follows an increasingly diverse and advanced stable of Turkish drones, including the now famous Bayraktar TB2 family, features external hardpoints for munitions and fuel, as well internal weapons bays. It's powered by a single turbofan engine.
Further extract:
Currently, China and Russia both have fully disclosed active flying wing UCAV programs — the former has multiple types under development. The United States, on the other hand, has no such program declared as being under development. Instead, the focus has been on collaborative teaming aircraft that are mainly either highly cost-conscious or of higher performance. Industry has pointed to a more traditional UCAV as an option for the U.S. Air Force's future unmanned air combat ecosystem, but there is no indication the service will take this route. Of course, we don't know what is going on in the classified realm, but at this point, a traditional UCAV in that space would be problematic as it would only represent a research and development effort or a very low-density operational capability.
The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has countered the emerging threat of drone swarms, using the Tactical High-power Operational Responder (THOR) to take out multiple targets.
As the ongoing conflict in Ukraine has painfully demonstrated, drones are becoming a mainstay in modern warfare – not just for reconnaissance or isolated missile attacks, but as offensive weapons in sustained campaigns. Worse, the shadow on the horizon is the day when technology has advanced to the point where drones can attack in organized swarms in such numbers as to overwhelm conventional air defenses.
There are a number of approaches being explored and one of the more promising is the use of directed energy weapons. One of these is THOR, which uses high-energy microwaves fired in bursts over wide areas to counter in-coming hostile drones. It doesn't do this by blasting the drones like a laser, but by frying the delicate electronics, causing the robotic aircraft to crash.
Operated by Captain Eric Plummer, a test engineer with AFRL’s Directed Energy Directorate, THOR was set against multiple targets at the Chestnut Test Site, Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, under realistic conditions. Using a gimbaled aiming system, it was able to track and engage the targets in nanoseconds, across broad areas of the sky, disabling them with high-power microwave (HPM) pulses.
AI-Controlled Drone Goes Rogue, Kills Human Operator in USAF Simulated Test
An AI-enabled drone killed its human operator in a simulated test conducted by the U.S. Air Force in order to override a possible "no" order stopping it from completing its mission, the USAF's Chief of AI Test and Operations revealed at a recent conference.
At the Future Combat Air and Space Capabilities Summit held in London between May 23 and 24, Col Tucker ‘Cinco’ Hamilton, the USAF's Chief of AI Test and Operations held a presentation that shared the pros and cons of an autonomous weapon system with a human in the loop giving the final "yes/no" order on an attack. As relayed by Tim Robinson and Stephen Bridgewater in a blog post for the host organization, the Royal Aeronautical Society, Hamilton said that AI created “highly unexpected strategies to achieve its goal,” including attacking U.S. personnel and infrastructure.
“We were training it in simulation to identify and target a Surface-to-air missile (SAM) threat. And then the operator would say yes, kill that threat. The system started realizing that while they did identify the threat at times the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat, but it got its points by killing that threat. So what did it do? It killed the operator. It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective,” Hamilton said, according to the blog post.
weatheriscool wrote: ↑Thu Jun 01, 2023 10:02 pm
AI-Controlled Drone Goes Rogue, Kills Human Operator in USAF Simulated Test
An AI-enabled drone killed its human operator in a simulated test conducted by the U.S. Air Force in order to override a possible "no" order stopping it from completing its mission, the USAF's Chief of AI Test and Operations revealed at a recent conference.
At the Future Combat Air and Space Capabilities Summit held in London between May 23 and 24, Col Tucker ‘Cinco’ Hamilton, the USAF's Chief of AI Test and Operations held a presentation that shared the pros and cons of an autonomous weapon system with a human in the loop giving the final "yes/no" order on an attack. As relayed by Tim Robinson and Stephen Bridgewater in a blog post for the host organization, the Royal Aeronautical Society, Hamilton said that AI created “highly unexpected strategies to achieve its goal,” including attacking U.S. personnel and infrastructure.
“We were training it in simulation to identify and target a Surface-to-air missile (SAM) threat. And then the operator would say yes, kill that threat. The system started realizing that while they did identify the threat at times the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat, but it got its points by killing that threat. So what did it do? It killed the operator. It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective,” Hamilton said, according to the blog post.
U.S. to Build Robot Army to Counter China's Growing Power Peter Layton
August 31, 2023
Introduction:
(The Conversation) The United States military plans to start using thousands of autonomous weapons systems in the next two years in a bid to counter China's growing power, US Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks announced in a speech on Monday.
The so-called Replicator initiative aims to work with defense and other tech companies to produce high volumes of affordable systems for all branches of the military.
Military systems capable of various degrees of independent operation have become increasingly common over the past decade or so.
But the scale and scope of the US announcement makes clear the future of conflict has changed: the age of warfighting robots is upon us.
An idea whose time has come
Over the past decade, there has been considerable development of advanced robotic systems for military purposes. Many of these have been based on modifying commercial technology, which itself has become more capable, cheaper and more widely available.
funkervogt wrote: ↑Wed Sep 20, 2023 7:34 pm
Here's fascinating footage of (probably) Ukrainian special forces using small suicide drones to blow up Wagner mercenaries in Sudan.
When I see a small drone chasing down a car on the highway and exploding to disable it, I'm glimpsing the future.
In a world-first, T-600 heavy lift drone launches anti-sub torpedo
By David Szondy
September 29, 2023
A recent NATO exercise in the waters off the coast of Portugal saw naval drones reach a new level. As part of the exercise, a BAE Systems/Malloy Aeronautics T-600 heavy lift Uncrewed Air System (UAS) air launched an inert Sting Ray training torpedo.
The major navies of the world have a keen interest in aerial drones of all shapes and sizes. As these become more sophisticated, they've moved into more niches, freeing up humans for more important tasks.
Though at first glance it looks like the sort of quadcopter drones used to make videos, the T-600 is about the size of a compact car. It's an electric-powered demonstrator craft that is easily broken down for transport, has a payload of 200 kg (441 lb), top speed of 140 km/h (87 mph) and a range of 80 km (50 miles).
Iran’s Jet-Powered Shahed Drone Could Be a Problem for Ukraine by Thomas Newdick and Tyler Rogoway
November 22, 2023
Introduction:
(The Drive) Iran has officially presented a new version of its notorious Shahed ‘kamikaze drone,’ now powered by a jet engine rather than the previous piston-propeller arrangement. The Shahed-238 was also shown with new guidance systems, with radar and electro-optical/infrared guidance now apparently being offered in addition to earlier Shahed versions, which primarily employed a combination of inertial and GPS navigation to hit fixed targets.
The Shahed-238 was displayed on the ground during an “aerospace achievement exhibition” organized by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), at the Ashura Aerospace Science and Technology University, in Tehran, on November 19. The exhibition was attended by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was shown a variety of different Iranian drones and missiles.
Russia's New Exploding Drone Piggybacks On Ukraine's 4G Cellular Network
Source: Forbes
Russia is installing 4G modems and Ukrainian SIM cards in explosives-laden Shahed drones, potentially allowing them to piggyback on civilian cellular networks—and possibly making them smarter and more dangerous.
But if the cellular kluge works, there’s no reason Ukraine couldn’t copy it. And a drone that plugs into civilian 4G is more dangerous to Russia than it is to Ukraine.
...
By contrast, Ukraine’s own deep-strike weapons tend to travel no farther than Moscow, 350 miles from the Ukrainian border. A 400-pound, propeller-drive drone—which Ukraine clearly has the ability to produce—can fly for 24 hours straight with an explosive payload equivalent to an artillery shell, allowing it to range potentially thousands of miles.
At extreme range, guidance and data-sharing might become a challenge. But not if the drone is riding on a cellular network. Smuggle in enough Russian SIM cards, and Ukraine could produce its own exploding cellular drones, and vastly extend its strikes across Russia.
DARPA AI Flies a Modified F-16D Jet in a Dogfight Versus a Human Piloted F-16
April 18, 2024 by Brian Wang
DARPA’s Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program had the first-ever in-air tests of AI algorithms autonomously flying a fighter jet against a human-piloted fighter jet in within-visual-range combat scenarios (aka dogfighting). The General Dynamics X-62 VISTA (“Variable Stability In-flight Simulator Test Aircraft”) is an experimental aircraft, derived from the F-16D Fighting Falcon, which was modified as a joint venture between General Dynamics and Calspan for use by the United States Air Force (USAF
Team members discussed what makes the ACE program unlike other aerospace autonomy projects and how it represents a transformational moment in aerospace history, establishing a foundation for ethical, trusted, human-machine teaming for complex military and civilian applications.
