JAKARTA The US Pentagon is planning a new'missile of mass destruction' involving thousands of drones attacking by air, land, and water to destroy enemy defenses. But experts fear humans can lose control of the drone's 'friendship'.
The secret project, dubbed AMASS (Autonomous Multi-Domain Adaptive Swarms-of-Swarms), will represent automatic warfare on an unprecedented scale.
AMASS is still in the planning stage, but the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) has amassed offers from suppliers for a $78 million contract.
Small drones will be equipped with weapons and tools for navigation and communication, along with other capabilities ranging from radar interference to launching deadly attacks.
While technology will change the way the US is at war, experts in the industry are expressing concerns.
"When the herd grows bigger, it is almost impossible for humans to make decisions," said Zachary Kallenborn, a policy researcher at George Mason University in Virginia.
The US military has also been using unmanned aerial vehicles on the battlefield since 2001, but has since evolved to use smaller and hidden engines to sneak through enemy lines to destroy camps or even disrupt opposing technology.
AMASS DARPA will release thousands as well as small drones to perform some tasks with little or even no human intervention.
"Drones can help, they can watch, and they can kill," said US Army Lieutenant Colonel Paul Lushenko, while speaking at a panel in Cornell last year, quoted by the Daily Mail.
In theory, AMASS can be completely non-lethal, carry out jamming or other non-kinetic attacks to support other platforms that actually destroy the defense, said Kallenborn, also quoted by the Daily Mail. "But I don't think that's possible."
The development of the AMASS project will involve experiments with real and virtual drone swarms, then gradually increase its size and complexity.
According to the DARPA federal contract document, AMASS will create the ability to dynamically order and control (C2) unmanned herd, autonomous of various types of drones in general C2 language.
DARPA said the herd would be tasked with an optimization process that considers mission objectives, priorities, risks, resource availability, herd capabilities, and time.
A DARPA spokesman told SWNS that the purpose of this program is to make humans make important decisions, with drones waiting for permission to act if communication fails.
According to the US Department of Defense's policy of autonomous weapons (known as Directive 3000.09): Autonomous and semi-autonomous weapon system will be designed to allow commanders and operators to perform appropriate human assessment levels for the use of force."
But Kallenborn is skeptical When the flock grows in size, it is almost impossible for humans to make decisions. Autonomy and AI will be needed to make these decisions, "said Kallenborn.
AMASS is not the only DARPA project involving a swarm of autonomous drones. Over the years, they have developed an OFFSET (Actional Program activation of Attacks) project, which will involve up to 250 aerial and ground drones.
Israel's first true drone flock attempt was made in a 2021 conflict with Hamas in Gaza. But nothing as big as AMASS.
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