Current Situation of U.S. Military Unmanned Equipment (II)—Unmanned Operation Platform

At present, with the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology,“Unmanned car”“Unmanned ship”“Drone”A large number of intelligent unmanned equipment emerged and continued to expand its application in actual combat, especially inBattlefield perception, operation space, combat mode, command and control and logistics supportNew characteristics and changes are presented on the top, which will drive a sharp change in the form of war.

The battlefield perception system plays a similar role in the combat system“Eyes, ears”The important role of the enemy's attack and protection against the battlefield perception system has become one of the important tasks of modern warfare, and the survivability of the battlefield perception system is facing severe tests. During the Gulf War, Kosovo War and Iraq War, the ground and underwater sensors of the US military are often damaged by human interference from the opponent, and even misjudgment caused by receiving deliberately misleading information from the other party. Unmanned reconnaissance and early warning equipment is fully utilizedAnti-electronic interference, flexible maneuverability, and resistant to nuclear radiationThe advantages of such as this have greatly improved the survivability of the battlefield perception system.

Unmanned combat will change the future war form

21Since the beginning of the century, new generation information technologies such as artificial intelligence, information grids, mobile networks, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things have developed rapidly, providing technical support for improving battlefield information perception capabilities. For example, the US military has successively carried out research and application of a series of sensor systems, including intelligent dust systems that collect battlefield information, Lombas system that remotely monitors the battlefield environment, sand-based linear systems that listen to the movement of weapons platforms, and wolf pack systems that specialize in retrieving electromagnetic signals, and integrated resources such as command and control systems, strategic early warning systems, battlefield sensing systems, combat readiness monitoring systems, equipment and material management visualization systems, to build a centralized and unified battlefield sensing network system, and to achieve the goal of interconnection and interconnection of battlefield entity infrastructure and information infrastructure. This will bring a new revolution to information acquisition: on the one handCan eliminate reconnaissance blind spots, realize the battlefield“Seamless”Perception and improve the transparency of the battlefield; on the other hand, it can include all personnel, weapons, equipment and support materials on the battlefield into the network, and any sensor on the network node can be connected to various reconnaissance and surveillance systems located on satellites and aircraft.Obtain spatial positioning capabilities of the target that it does not have, so as to realize perception, that is, positioning。

The military forces of major countries in the world are developingWith equipment unmanned reconnaissance aircraftApplied to the battlefieldReconnaissance, surveillance and attack

The unmanned combat platform equipped by the US military is mainly used in command, Control, communication, computer, intelligence, surveillance, target positioning, acquisition, reconnaissance (In the field of C4ISTAR, drones such as MQ-9 "Death" are also taking on firepower strike missions, and K-MAX has also begun to invest in practical deployment in electronic warfare, attack support, network communication relay and other fields. However, most of these unmanned combat operations were carried out at the above level of battle in the past, and the US military was not satisfied with this and developed a multi-rotor drone system for tactical-level combat.

The design concept of multi-rotor drone is very advanced, requiring combat platforms to provide continuous reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities under all terrain and all weather conditions, enhance soldiers' continuous situational awareness of the battlefield space in ground combat, thereby improving combat effectiveness and survivability. This combat concept emphasizes"Current battlefield space", drones must master the battlefield situation from every day to several months. The battlefield information obtained is only for ordinary soldiers to use, specifically to ensure combat needs in the tactical field, rather than more advanced C4ISR operations such as battles and strategies. Under all terrain conditions, the "current battlefield space" has some distance limitations at a certain moment. For example, in urban combat environments, the current battlefield space is limited to a radius of about 15 meters, while in an open desert environment, the current battlefield space may exceed 1.6 kilometers in any direction.

Currently, although there are many UAV models used by the U.S. ground forces, they still do not have the current battlefield situation awareness capabilities. For example, the Marine Corps team uses it."Scan Eagle" drone captain1.22meter, wingspan3.05Rice, full weight15Kilograms, endurance15～48Hourly, larger flights4900meter, the wings can be folded and placed in a storage box for tactical deployment, but cannot provide true stable images, cannot achieve "hovering and continuous ground surveillance", nor can it launch and land on narrow terrains such as forests and dense blocks.

"Scan Eagle" drone

For soldiers fighting on the ground, there is no current battlefield space"Time Window", intelligence information must be transmitted to soldiers through cooperative drone operators. Because the battlefield intelligence information is very time-consuming, for example, some radio-transmitted image information of enemy tactical maneuvers may be outdated within a few seconds. If the drone operator wants to transmit this information to soldiers fighting on the ground, it must conduct close combat coordination. At present, the US military has a low deployment density of large drones on the battlefield, and there are many combat support requirements at various levels. To transmit sensor signals to ground squads operating at tactical level, detailed coordination is still required in advance. This coordination takes a lot of time, and time is a key element of tactical-level operations or fire strike operations. Therefore, it is more necessary to develop tactical-level multi-rotor drones.

From the perspective of tactical-level intelligence information needs, a soldier performs combat missions in a given environment, and his direct visual situational awareness is limited to two-dimensional space and can only be used through advanced tactical optical scopes. （ACOG) and other devices observe the battlefield environment, and the sight cannot pass through obstacles such as walls, hills, and bushes, nor can we find targets in dangerous environments such as darkness and street corners. However, if a soldier launches and operates a small drone by himself, he can obtain the fast and real-time image information needed, and realizes three-dimensional situational awareness of the current battlefield space through multi-dimensional and visual capabilities, greatly improving the combat effectiveness and survivability of ground soldiers. In addition to improving soldiers' situational awareness, multi-rotor drones can also provide top-down information flow, which does not have any contact with the current battlefield space in time. Under the direct command of the soldiers, the drone directly guarantees the action of the team. The information obtained is automatically integrated into the troops' mobility plan, and does not distract soldiers from completing their main, secondary, or even third battlefield responsibilities.