BETHESDA, Md. \u2014 The U.S. Navy is looking for a drone that can fly over a damaged airfield and come up with a plan to get planes back in the air quickly, the head of Navy Expeditionary Combat Command said Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
NECC wants an unmanned aerial system that can fly out over an airfield after an attack and work with artificial intelligence to help its people find the best way to fix it, Rear Adm. Brian Brakke told a session at the Global Explosive Ordnance Disposal Symposium & Exhibition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHow can I use UAS to run the initial damage assessment across that airfield?\u201d he asked, outlining his thinking. \u201cIs there artificial intelligence, deep machine learning, that can run across that field, scan it, tell me what [unexploded] munitions I have left, what condition [the airfield] is in, how many craters I have, how can they be filled; then map me out a plan that my teams can look at and say: \u2018OK, this is how we\u2019re going to attack this problem and get that runway back up in an expedient fashion\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Experts say the technology for Brakke\u2019s notional drone is partly available already \u2014 there are drones that can create high-fidelity maps of locations and send them back for analysis. But getting the drone to also come up with a plan of attack for repairing the damaged airfield is tricky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got commercial drones flying right now and taking volume measurements of stock piles,\u201d said Michael Blades, an analyst with consulting and research firm Frost & Sullivan, who studies unmanned systems. \u201cThat kind of high-precision mapping and surveying is going on right now. You can get one hell of a three-dimensional map by flying over a few times.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The issue, Blades said, is the analysis piece \u2014 telling the difference between a rock and an unexploded ordnance is still very much reliant on expert human eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTo do that autonomously, to say, \u2018The mine is here, here and here,\u2019 that\u2019s the leap,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Michael Horowitz, an unmanned systems expert at the University of Pennsylvania, agreed that what\u2019s out there now isn\u2019t exactly what Brakke is looking for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCurrent technologies could give you a high-fidelity map after an attack,\u201d he said. \u201cThe ability to use that data to generate a blueprint to repair that runway would be a new step.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Developing the AI to help operators plan airfield recoveries could range from relatively simple to enormously difficult, Horowitz said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An easier hurdle would be creating algorithm that had four preprogrammed damage scenarios and recovery plans, and based on what the drone is seeing it could then recommend the best course of action. But creating a detailed plan of action on the fly with data being collected in real time would be very difficult but not necessarily impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whatever technologies get delivered to NECC, Brakke said companies need to factor in maintenance and support needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf I don\u2019t have the folks to work on it, to understand it, to maintain it, I\u2019m not creating a more effective force, I\u2019m creating something that\u2019s going to sit on a shelf that we\u2019re not going to use,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have to have a balance of that going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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