DARPA LOSING CONTROL OF KILLER DRONES?

For decades, Pentagon mad sci­ence divi­sion Darpa as been at the fore­front of robot­ics research — includ­ing, and espe­cially, the devel­op­ment of killer drones. But there are signs that agency’s work on armed robotic planes and copters could be shrink­ing in the years to come.
Aerospace Daily reports that Darpa has been forced to can­cel its project to develop an unmanned, heavily-​​armed heli­copter. The Army, Darpa’s part­ner in the Unmanned Combat Armed Rotorcraft (UCAR) pro­gram, lost inter­est. And so the agency can’t afford the $160 mil­lion tab for the project’s next phase.
“Designed for low– to medium-​​altitude recon­nais­sance and attack, the UCAR would have been the most autonomous unmanned air­craft ever built,” Aerospace Daily’s Jefferson Morris explains, “capa­ble of coor­di­nat­ing with other UCARs and accept­ing high-​​level ver­bal com­mands from oper­a­tors.“
Darpa’s fixed-​​wing drone pro­gram isn’t quite as sophis­ti­cated. But its devel­op­ment is way, way more advanced. Today, the UCAR exists only in PowerPoint. There are work­ing pro­to­types of the unmanned planes, called Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAVs) in Pentagonese.
Last spring, a Darpa-​​funded X45-​​A UCAV dropped a load of smart bombs on tar­gets in the Mojave Desert. In December, a sin­gle human pilot was able to con­trol two of the drones at once.
In coop­er­a­tion with the Air Force and then Navy, Darpa recently com­mit­ted to Boeing and Northrop Grumman about a bil­lion bucks each to build the next killer drone mod­els.
But whether those funds will actu­ally come through is now an open ques­tion. In its recent Program Budget Decision, the Pentagon brass called for a bil­lion dol­lars to be excised from the UCAV pro­gram over the next five fis­cal years.
What’s more, Darpa may be out of the killer drone effort. The remain­ing money for the project would be trans­ferred out of Darpa cof­fers and into the Air Force’s kitty. According to the bud­get doc­u­ment, the Pentagon lead­er­ship wants a “restructur[ing]” of the pro­gram, “with empha­sis on the devel­op­ment of air vehi­cles that will con­tribute to… future joint warfight­ing con­cepts of oper­a­tions.” That would seem to imply that Darpa’s killer drones didn’t really meet the Defense Department’s future war plans.
Darpa tells Aerospace Daily it remains “com­mit­ted” to build­ing unmanned sys­tems. But, when it comes to armed robots, the Pentagon higher-​​ups may not be com­mit­ted to Darpa.

January 5th, 2005 | Drones | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.