How AI-enabled sUAS are transforming critical government missions
This Small UAS Innovation Day fireside chat with Peter Singer and Troy Schneider focuses on national security, advocating for a new strategy that leverages high-volume, low-cost autonomous systems in modern warfare, amidst the rapid technological advancements offering unique opportunities for military innovation.
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- So Peter, thank you, uh, again for being here today, and, and
- Mark did a great job of, of recapping
- the different hats you wear on things, and, you know, journalist, author,
- professor, uh, I think a few more we're, we're leaving out
- there. But, uh, you bring a really interesting, uh,
- set of diverse perspectives to, to this.
- And, and I'd like to kind of start with just
- that, that level setting.
- Like how, how would you describe the current state
- of, of
- attritable autonomous systems and, um, you know, and their use particularly
- in, in public sector missions?
- So first want to, want to thank the organizers and also, um,
- thank you for that,
- that kind introduction. I have to add though, um,
- if you're trying to have the
- most interesting think tank report, it's not tough competition.
- [laughs]
- Uh, so [laughs] um, so if you'll permit me, I'll,
- I'll begin with a, a, a
- story about when I first started writing on this field.
- I did a, a prior book called, uh, Wired for War that was a
- look at, um, how in Afghanistan and
- Iraq we were starting to see unmanned systems, uh, begin to be
- used. That this technology from science fiction
- was becoming real, whether
- it was the small UGVs on the ground to, uh,
- starting to see some larger UAS, et cetera, and a couple of small
- UAS. But I remember, um, two experiences that sort of give us a
- sense of
- where we were back then. Um, first was I met
- with a US senator, and I literally had to kind of go
- back and forth with him and explain, uh, "No, I'm not
- making this up. Uh, there is no human
- inside," you know, like the old, um, if you've ever heard of the
- Mechanical Turk, like, you know, a little midget hiding inside the chess
- machine. I, you know, I was like, "No, it's not that way.
- They really are-- we're moving into unmanned, remotely
- piloted, et cetera." So there was a, um, awareness issue,
- uh, a believability issue. The second was,
- um, I gave a talk at, um, US Air War
- College, uh, and talked about how,
- um, we were going to see more and more of these technologies,
- uh, and that they would become more and more important, and, um, they'd be
- taking on greater roles in everything from ISR to
- strike to transportation. Um, I didn't say anything
- crazy like, "Oh, you know, it's only gonna be unmanned systems in the
- future," or,
- you know, "It's gonna end warfare." Nothing like
- that, just said it's gonna be a
- lot more important. And as what, you know, normally happens at the events,
- the, the commandant gets up on stage, um, and he turns--
- normally they thank you, and he turns to the audience and, um,
- of these
- mid-career Air Force officers and says, um, "Don't listen to anything he
- just said.
- He's wrong.
- Um, this is not the future. This is not the future of the Air Force."
- Um, he made, uh, a couple of mistakes.
- Uh, the first, I was not an Air Force employee.
- Uh, second, they'd left my mic on. Uh, so I then,
- um, proceeded to tell him why he was wrong, and we had a nice
- little back and forth in front of all the mid-career students.
- And, um, I was not invited back to the Air War
- College for fifteen years.
- [laughs]
- Um, but to the point here, um,
- I think I won the argument. Um, I've-- uh, now I'm the adjunct
- professor at the Air War College. Uh, but
- secondly, I think this is clearly
- the present and the future, not the one, you know, of this
- is the end of manned systems. Uh, but very clearly this
- is a technology that has, um, proliferated across a
- wide variety of roles. Uh, it's grown
- in scale, it's grown in users, public sector, private
- sector. There's not a, a single conflict or type of
- organization where we're not seeing it present.
- But, um, we're also, I think, only
- scratching the surface of, um... and I think you used that phrase
- as well, of where we're at, because in many ways,
- the use has been, um,
- a early starter learning and often
- kind of ad hoc. And, and we've got some, uh, images to
- show you, and if you can bring up one, I'll end on this with, uh, I think, uh,
- the
- next slide there, if you could. Um, I think in many ways just to sort of think
- about this parallel. Uh, that is an Italian pilot in
- 1911, um, in what is
- Libya. He's serving for the Kingdom of Italy in
- their
- war against the Ottoman Empire. That's the
- first aeroplane to be used in warfare.
- Uh, it went forty-five miles per hour.
- Um, he was able to do something not possible
- before,
- bring back ISR real time, rapid, et cetera.
- Um, secondly, after about a week of doing that,
- for whatever
- reason, he got bored, and he took up with him, uh, a
- handful of explosives and dropped them out of the side of the
- plane.
- Uh, and so he conducted the first aerial
- strike, the first, uh...
- So you can look at that, and again, think about like parallels today.
- You can either say, "Well, it didn't end the war," or, "They kept
- using cannons," or, um, et cetera.
- Or you could look at it and go,
- "Something big is going on here, and we're gonna see a lot
- more and more of it as people learn how to do it better, as other people
- copycat." And of course, you know, you see rapid change from
- that.
- And I mean, the, yeah, the, the journey from Wright brothers to where
- we are with
- unmanned systems, uh, uncrewed systems now in what,
- a hundred and
- fifteen years, is,
- is, is remarkable. You, you touched on, um, you know, you weren't invited back for
- fifteen years, which sort of gives a date for when
- that conversation was, was
- happening. What about the, the conversation with the senator?
- How, how-- what's the, the time span we're talking about where
- this thinking
- has changed so dramatically?
- I think that happened pretty rapidly because, um, the-
- The technology on the large scale side,
- uh, again, in, in kind of, you know, unplanned ways.
- And I, I was interested, I was talking to a group of, um, uh,
- US military
- leaders yesterday, and, and I think this hits, you know,
- some larger conversations
- here is: How do you, how do you drive change?
- Mm-hmm.
- How do you create change, particularly within bureaucracies that,
- uh,
- want to resist it? Where, you know, at every level there's a reason to say no.
- And the story that we've seen repeated,
- um, in, uh... I don't know if we were losing my mic there. There we go.
- Uh, we've seen repeated in, um, you know, whether it's the story
- of, uh, small unmanned ground vehicles to what
- played out with UAS, is, um, once you get
- the use cases, even if it's not what was originally
- anticipated for it,
- once you get that demand from the field.
- Mm-hmm.
- And then secondly, it means that people can say they,
- this works and often there's a, there's sort of a counterclaim of, "No,
- it doesn't
- work. This is the problem with it. It'll never do this." And, you know,
- that's the
- case whether it was with small UGVs, which were, you know,
- originally designed for things like exploring caves, and then they were
- deployed for, um, EOD work to, uh,
- what we've seen with UAS. Um, you know, again, think of
- all, all the applications, uh, across, you know,
- ISR to, um, you know, now we're seeing them for
- delivery, and delivery of anything from
- blood to medicine to, uh, if you're a
- criminal, drugs. Uh, if you're also, you know...
- Uh, the flip side of medicine,
- um, to, of course, uh, utilizing delivery of explosives.
- Uh, so I think it's this combination of
- getting it out in the
- field. Um, there's no denying that it exists.
- There's no denying that it works. And then you get this massive demand
- signal from the users. Uh, and that's where, you know, again,
- and this is, I think, our colleagues, um, uh,
- in this room, it's often, um, more of the demand
- is coming from like the combatant commands or the partners than it's
- coming from within the, the big
- bureaucracy, so to speak. Uh, and
- again, that's, that's kind of to be expected.
- Um,
- but that, that changes over time.
- Yeah. And you sort of, I mean, put up a great historical parallel
- to, you know, go back to this Italian pilot.
- Um,
- the, you know, the explosive tossed over, uh, the side may or may not
- have, uh, um, dramatically moved the needle.
- Aerial ISR was obviously a, a huge shift.
- Um, you know,
- do you have kind of a, a, a high level take on what
- the, you know, what the most transformative aspects are
- of, um, of the use of, of UAS, uh... And let's stick to the
- battlefield use cases right now. Is it, you know, is it bigger, better ISR, or are
- there things that we should be thinking about differently?
- So the... It, it is, it's ISR, but it's how it
- feeds into the larger... And people will use lots
- of different, you know, descriptions of it.
- There's, "It's the kill chain." But that, that assumes that you're always using it
- for that, that aspect of, um, strike.
- Uh, it's, um... Let's, let's flip it this way.
- Mm-hmm.
- Let's, let's think about what's come out of, um,
- Ukraine.
- Uh,
- we
- saw a state that had
- no s- no space capability, a very,
- very limited manned air force, um,
- and yet it has been able to use
- primarily UAS to, um, do
- everything from, uh... You know, they played a key role in
- the, uh, stopping of the initial Russian invasion.
- Um, while there was a lot of really cool
- videos of the, um,
- initial strikes coming off of, you know, the Turkish version of the predator,
- um, that was more about social media.
- The real role was, um, the ISR for the artillery
- missile strikes that proved, uh, so important,
- uh, to where we stand today, where, um, there
- is not a unit, both the Ukrainian or a Russian unit,
- that doesn't go out supported by these
- technologies and opposed by these
- technologies. And that's also been part of the, the, the
- challenge for... And this, I think, is a big, um,
- it's a little bit of a onus on us as partners of Ukraine.
- Um, we, in the training for the
- counteroffensive, trained them in best
- practices from, you know,
- early 2000s, 1990s. They were not ready for an
- adversary that also was using so many UAS and small UAS,
- um, and how they were able to, uh, sight for artillery,
- their artillery, to deployment of mines, you name it.
- Um, you can have a similar discourse, and I think this is so crucial, about,
- um, uh, on the, a- at sea. You know,
- Ukraine, in effect, had, had a very small navy.
- Um, much of it had been either physically
- seized or sunk
- by the Russians in tw- in 2014 and in this one.
- Um, the Russians hoped to be able to do things
- like, uh,
- have an amphi- there's multiple times, amphibious landings,
- hoped to close off the
- Black Sea, uh, through the use
- of both, uh, unmanned surface vessels, again,
- small ones, not the big 2,000, 3,000 ton ones, which
- the US Navy is still, um, interested in,
- uh, but also through UAS. Um,
- they-
- We did everything from sink Russia's Black Sea flagship to about
- half their Black Sea's fleet has now been sunk either at sea or in
- harbors, and they've pushed them back hundreds of
- kilometers.
- Um, and so again, you know, it gave them a, a naval capability,
- uh, that they wouldn't have had before.
- But when I say naval, it's this combination obviously of air
- and, and sea assets. Um, you know, I think, uh,
- to make another historic parallel, uh, we
- will look at or are looking at Ukraine as the equivalent
- of like the Spanish Civil War during the 1930s,
- where, um, there was a great deal of, uh, you know, there was a
- competition between, um, you know, the arise of fascism, and
- there was a question, you know, are you gonna aid local parties,
- volunteers, you
- know, all that kind of discourse that I think there's a lot of parallels to
- Putin
- today. Um, but the second is it was obviously,
- uh, a test ground for a variety of
- technologies that had been
- introduced before into warfare, um, but now we saw them being
- used in greater numbers and being brought together in new
- approaches. Um, a- actually, if you could pull up another slide there.
- Um, go into the next one.
- So it's a little bit like if you think, um, you know, the Blitzkrieg, it
- was tested out in, um, the Spanish Civil
- War, and it wasn't just about one technology,
- it was
- about how that technology was brought together into a new system
- of thinking, and I think we can see equivalents like
- that
- where we're getting a taste of it. And the worry is which
- states learn the lessons from it and which ones don't.
- Mm.
- So, you know, it was all there in front of everyone's
- face in the
- mid-1930s, but, uh, the French and the, and the Germans
- didn't learn the lessons of it. Um, if you'll permit
- me, uh, next slide. Um, next slide.
- Uh,
- I think a big question that we're gonna have to ask ourselves in
- terms of
- lessons is, um, is bigger always
- better?
- Uh, and this is the case whether you're
- thinking about manned
- or unmanned at sea, in the air, on the
- ground, or if you're just thinking about, um,
- coins.
- [laughs]
- Uh, um, and, uh, to give a different historic example,
- you can see,
- you know, we're supposed to be talking about the
- future, but I love talking about
- history because it gives us guides, it grounds us. If you can do...
- go to the next slide. Um,
- those are the, uh, permi... you know, on the right is the German
- Tiger one tank.
- Big, heavily armed. Um, it had one of the
- best kill ratios of World War II. But it was
- so expensive that the Germans could only manufacture
- 1,300 of them. On the left is the, um, Sherman tank.
- Uh, m- it's, uh... we
- could go back and forth, but basically it wasn't as good as the
- Tiger
- by measures of like lethality, which was the buzzword in the Pentagon a couple
- of
- years back. But
- we manufactured 51,000 of them. Um, and
- so we have to ask ourselves today, are we, um, are we, you
- know, do we want the Tiger or do we want the Sherman?
- And again, that's a question that every organization, um,
- whether you're a military, but frankly also if you're like a law
- enforcement or
- whatever, do I want the big, expensive, uh, high quality or do
- I want scale? And again, that's, that's an open question, but, um,
- there's a history to all this.
- And I j- I wanna come back to, um, that, that scale and, you know,
- the,
- you know,
- any small, maybe not disposable, but certainly, um,
- uh, um, you know, the loss is survivable, um,
- in a minute. But I wanna s- I wanna stick with ISR, uh, for,
- for a moment, 'cause
- it, you know, I think it's, it's telling that that was like, you know,
- the very
- first aerial military, um, mission.
- And when you talked about, um, what's going on in Ukraine, the...
- so much of this has been done with, you know,
- commercial off-the-shelf technology
- or kind of homebrew, uh, solutions that, that the Ukrainians have
- done. And I, and I think, correct me if I'm wrong, that most of it's still
- happening with kind of the traditional ISR model.
- You know, single operator, single device,
- often but not always line of sight.
- And, um, a- and that's, uh, you know, but that's sort
- of just the tip of the iceberg. I know from your writing and, and your,
- your other
- marks. Can you just talk about, A, what's already possible to sort of do
- ISR in a different way and, and maybe w- you
- know, kind of putting on your, your useful fiction hat a little bit,
- what's, what
- you see just over the horizon?
- Sure. So, um, if you're thinking about a
- task related to AI and robotics, a, a
- real key to it is figuring out not just, um,
- the technology that I want, but the partnership between it
- and the human. Um, not to ruin the, the book for you,
- that's one of the underlying themes of, of Burn-In that they, they kindly provided
- to some folks. So, you know, if you think like Moby-Dick
- is not actually about a
- hunt for a whale, Burn-In is not, you know, there's a...
- it's a hunt for a terrorist.
- Yeah.
- Uh, but it's really about this question of,
- um, what are the different types of
- potential partnership between human and machine.
- And, um, if you're thinking about ISR, and ISR, again,
- we could be talking about ISR on the battlefield,
- we could be talking about ISR for
- law enforcement-
- Mm-hmm
- ... we're gonna be talking about ISR, I'm a farmer trying to figure out what's
- happening to my crops. Um, or we're thinking about
- another role. Um, I'm thinking about medicine, I'm
- thinking about delivery. Uh, whatever it is, um,
- there's essentially four different relationships between
- human and, um, our machines, our, our, our, our
- AI. One is, um, it is a, a,
- aid to us in, in some way, an advisor, a
- concierge. It, it suggests courses of action.
- Courses of action, whether it's, um, uh, what news you
- should read on your social media, uh, if you're, you know, Netflix,
- it's what movies you should watch to literally, um, Netflix uses it to
- decide what movies to make and which actor should be in them.
- It's why Chris Pratt's in everything right now.
- Um,
- the... but it's also we're seeing, you know, advice to, uh,
- um- Where to deploy systems on a battlefield,
- or if you're
- doing border security. There's a second, which is related but
- different, where it's an extension of me.
- It extends my reach. Extends my reach if I'm a doctor
- doing, um, remote surgery, extends my reach if I'm, um, uh,
- sitting in Nevada flying a, a large UAS over, uh,
- Afghanistan. Um,
- third related but different is it's
- my partner, it's my wing man, it's my teammate, it's operating,
- operating alongside me, whether I'm a police officer with a
- robotic
- dog right beside me, um, or I,
- I'm, um, you know, the, the Air Force's plan for combat
- collaborative
- aircraft,
- uh, to, um, I'm working in a factory or university lab.
- And again, to pause here, like you can see how you need very
- different human
- skills. It's not just about the machine I want-
- You need very different human
- skills, right? If, if, uh, how much training do you need to be,
- uh, if it's a partner or you're remotely operating it, uh, et
- cetera. And then there's a fourth and final is, um, it's an
- agent representing me.
- Um, and that, and that gets to the final part where
- if it's an agent out there representing me,
- it can then cooperate, collaborate, whatever, you know, verb you want to
- use, with other of my agents, which then can create
- a agency of its own, which is like the idea of, you know,
- in, in biology, you know, the individual birds,
- but then a flock takes
- on kind of an agency of its own. Again, if
- you're Amazon thinking about delivery or you're a
- police department thinking about how to use robotics, you essentially have
- to choose one of those pathways. Um, you can't choose them
- all because you would have wildly different training requirements
- for your people. Um, you also would have wildly different
- robotic
- systems that you would want. Uh, and so, um, you know,
- again, I think we're... And, and, and the decision that you make on
- which to choose is gonna be guided by everything from, um, the
- expense of the technology to what you're most comfortable with.
- Mm.
- Has the policy and law caught up to it yet?
- Yeah. And
- wonder if maybe you can tell a, a little bit of a story.
- Where, where-
- Here, let's take the, the German tank off the screen there to
- just be like...
- It's a little creepy for all of us. [laughs]
- [laughs] Keeps rolling towards us throughout the, the conversation.
- Oh, that's, that's an even, the spookier one. We can talk about
- that if you want.
- [laughs]
- Um, yeah. Um, by all means, go there, and then I'll come back to my question.
- Oh, this is, um, uh, you know, one thing we have to understand with this
- is, um, it's both about a capability that's
- been kind of staring us in the face for a while, but we've not been willing to
- look at, that both we can deploy, but bluntly, also
- adversaries can deploy. Um, and as was referenced,
- uh, we have a project called Useful Fiction
- that basically it's the idea of
- taking, um,
- some, some nonfiction research analysis, a white paper, a strategy paper,
- and sharing it through narrative.
- Uh, it's a little bit like a, um, a smoothie.
- Uh, so if, if a white paper is kale, um, it's hard to get people to
- consume it. Uh, useful fiction is like, take that kale, wrap it
- together. And the idea of narrative is, um, not only are people,
- you know, whether they're a senior leader
- or a mid-career, they're not only more
- likely to consume it, the science shows they're more likely to
- absorb it.
- And, um, this is an example of a project we did for
- Australia that relates to small
- UAS. Uh, it's actually from two years back,
- pre-Ukraine, pre-Gaza, where they had run...
- their military had run some testing, um, about, uh,
- it was basically discovering that both small
- UAS were offering their units more capability,
- but secondly, they had to think about adversaries and
- that their defenses were not set up for them.
- And the challenge was the, the AAR, the, the war game lessons
- weren't being listened to in other parts of the organization.
- So we took their AAR and we turned it into a, um,
- a short story, but
- also this artwork that kind of says it all.
- And if you're Australian, you'll look... it's a, um, it's a Hobart class.
- It's their most expensive warship, but it could shoot
- down ballistic missiles. It couldn't defend itself against small
- UAS.
- You can obviously think about parallels right now
- in whether it's, um, off Yemen,
- Ukraine, uh, to, you know, worries about...
- I was speaking with a general recently about, um, uh, large,
- um, uh, gatherings of people in the United States,
- like a, a, a, a
- stadium or something like that. And, you know, the point was you don't have
- to, um, always... The, the most expensive exquisite
- threat isn't actually the one that m- maybe you should be worrying about the
- most.
- And, uh,
- you know, you were talking about the, the different paths and the different, um,
- you know, ways you can start to bring this
- technology in, and I'm wondering if
- maybe you can, uh, draw on an antidote from Burn-In to, to
- kind of help show what you're, you're talking about.
- 'Cause there's definitely the, um, you know, the partner wing man approach
- there. I mean, unmanned systems are sort of ubiquitous throughout the,
- the book.
- But, um, you know, can you give maybe just a, a,
- a quick little
- vignette of, you know, of one of the cases of, you know,
- of police use, whether
- it's as the, the wing man or the agent in, in that?
- Well, so what, what we did in the book, um, you know, the first was to try and
- share what we thought people needed to know.
- So it's a novel, but it had, um, has 300 footnotes in the back.
- I have never seen a novel-
- Yeah
- ... with that many footnotes. [laughs]
- Well, that's, that's the idea of, of useful fiction.
- And so, and also so that people can...
- when they say, "Oh, that would never happen," or,
- "That's not real." You're like,
- "Sorry, here's the footnote." It either already
- happened.
- So, you know, with the, the small UAS strike, um, while
- we, you know, Ukraine had not happened, um, Hezbollah had been using them
- already. So you, you know, people, threats learn from each other.
- Or it's, um, here someone is, you know, already put in
- a, a... They've already deployed this UAS to, uh,
- deliver
- drugs in Kenya. It's just we don't have...
- The FAA hasn't allowed us to do it here.
- Um, so, uh,
- but going back to that idea, when I was saying the, the four different
- pathways with our relationship with, um, AI
- and robotics,
- each org, each task you need to choose, but different
- entities are going to make different choices for different roles.
- Mm-hmm.
- So there may be some roles
- where it's partner model,
- but you may have other roles where it's swarm
- model or remote operation-
- Mm-hmm
- ... model. Um, and so what we,
- uh, you know, there's, like a, I mean, it's set in Washington, D.C.
- about 15 years from now, and I think I'm, I'm, you know, we're not
- going out on a limb by, uh, talking about how you will
- see, um, uh, as an example,
- um, and you've already seen, you know, people going, you know, there'll be
- deliveries happening by drone. Some of them will be, um,
- small scale. Uh,
- you know, I, I was just at, um, Ole Miss University.
- Uh, while there's no small UAS delivering, the
- sidewalks are filled with, uh, the little small rolling robots.
- Um, it, it's, it's... I mean, there's tons of them.
- Uh, I don't know how else to... And, and they're,
- they're delivering Chick-fil-A
- everywhere. I mean, think, like, like, you know, I'm supposedly a science fiction
- author, but, like, that scene, right?
- Right.
- If you, if you said, like, 15 years back, yeah, Ole Miss University,
- Chick-fil-A, there's gonna be robots driving around.
- I mean, it, it...
- But that's where we're at right now.
- So I think we'll see commercial use more and more for a
- variety of tasks. Oh, by the way, while something's delivering,
- it can also be gathering ISR, um, and that's
- clearly in the plans of a lot of different corporations.
- Um,
- public sector use, whether it's public sector use
- for, uh, overall monitoring of traffic or
- emergency scenes to, um, a tactical deployment,
- you know, a equivalent of a SWAT team.
- Um, I, I want this to go in first before I've got
- people.
- Um, or it might be some more mundane or
- really important public sector thing like, um, we have
- horrible infrastructure in the United States, so, um, bridge
- inspections-
- Mm
- ... and the like. So, um, in, in the same, you know, think of what's gonna
- be driving on the streets. Uh, uh, you know, our projection is it's,
- there'll be more
- cars that are more and more autonomous, but it's very clear that
- humans don't wanna give up the wheel, and so we'll have, um,
- some systems that don't have people, some systems where the person's riding
- behind it, um, ready to take over. And oh, by the way, um,
- what, you know, we... All of this is, you know, people are gonna, uh,
- come up with our new uses, come up with trying to take advantage of
- things.
- So, you know, we have a scene, I s- I hate to tell you, but, um, you know,
- so the
- opening scene is set outside Union Station.
- Um, there's a, a delivery happening.
- Um, there's a, uh, someone flying in on, um,
- from Dulles, uh, on, you know, we've got the visions of air
- taxis. It's already happened in Dubai.
- Again, not with a trained pilot behind it.
- There's, uh, a police drone flying overhead.
- But guess what?
- There's still a traffic jam even though there's some driverless
- vehicles because the different companies behind driverless cars are
- not gonna cooperate, and the different human drivers have
- figured
- out that you can, um, you can edge in on a
- robotic system and it'll automatically stop before you hit
- it. So that's how you, you kind of force your way into traffic,
- which we all
- do right now, right? So that's the, that's the-
- Yeah
- ... idea is that, you know, you'll have, um, this awesome future in some ways
- but, you know, a lot of the annoying human stuff
- is gonna still be with us.
- [laughs] Absolutely. And y- you know, so Chick-fil-A delivery
- was probably not what
- you would've been predicting, uh, uh, 15 years ago.
- But I'm curious sort of is... You've been thinking about this disruptive
- potential for, like, decades, not years.
- And, you know, w- what parts of this did you clearly see
- coming
- and, and what maybe caught you most by surprise
- over the last 12 to 18 months?
- So I think we, uh,
- i- in, in, in both the, the nonfiction work and, um, and
- also the useful fiction side, I think we got correct the,
- um, growing scale of the use, the growing advancement
- of it, the proliferation. Um, I think the big key of the,
- the, you know, we foresaw the, the lower barrier to entry
- that comes out of
- that. You know, when it's cheaper, when it's easier to use, more and more
- organizations, people use it. Um, I think we got the,
- the, uh, oh, by the way, you know, as I was referencing, it's
- not all gonna be, um, you know, easy and ice cream. It's gonna be...
- There's gonna be a lot of problems in our own use of it,
- policy questions, open law, um, how to
- figure out accountability, uh, and obviously threat
- actors using it more and more. I think we got that right.
- Um, the parts that,
- you know, looking at, like in a, uh, a Ukraine, I, I didn't get
- right or would've had a tougher time seeing, um,
- one is
- the incredibly rapid, not deployment, but
- iteration and adjustment, um,
- the... In, in the technology itself, the, b- and the, and the u- the back
- and forth of it. Um, you know, the, the folks on the corporate side can
- speak to this. I mean, it'd be an interesting Q&A to ask them,
- um, you know, how
- many upgrades, how many, you know, changes in the
- software or the hardware have you made over the course of a
- year? Um-
- I, I can't answer that for that. I can answer for, um, on the
- naval side. The, um, Ukrainians'
- unmanned surface vessels, you know, kind of the, the,
- the naval version of what
- we're talking about here,
- they've had six iterations in one year.
- And so, you know, they changed everything from certain
- physical
- components to, like, allow it to, um...
- They, they upped the range by, uh, 200 kilometers, or to carry
- a different kind of strike package, or to carry a different kind of ISR, or to
- be more stealthy. Uh, but maybe even more important,
- and probably a, a
- parallel to the small US side, tons of software
- changes basically to deal either with what was possible that hadn't
- been possible before or to counter some kind of Russian
- counter.
- So, you know, EW, uh, or GPS denial.
- And so they did, you know, six iterations, and I'm sure there's been a lot if
- we're, we're talking on other... I, I'd been used to the US
- system. Like, it was just, uh, you know,
- it w- I couldn't imagine getting six generations
- out, you know, and I,
- I'd been too ingrained in our acquisitions program.
- Um, and I think it points to, you know, a, a, a challenge
- for us. We're gonna have to systematically think
- about how to be able
- to do rapid iteration, um, as a, as a process.
- Um, you know, we're not even seeing that within the...
- Well, there's a lot of really cool, you know, test and experimental programs,
- but
- we're not seeing that kind of iteration that
- is happening out in the
- battlefield for a variety of different reasons.
- Um, the second is, um... And actually, you can go,
- go back a couple. Um, so the one that shows the,
- the video of the drone flying. So if you go in reverse.
- Um, one more. That one. Go... Uh, sorry. Yeah.
- Um, that we crossed a, a never ever moment,
- um,
- and there was nothing, there was not a big deal of it.
- You know, so that we, we saw more and more armed UAS,
- um, but there was a moment of, you know, we'll never ever see them
- autonomous and armed, and we've seen it.
- And it turned out not to be controversial,
- uh, and I was really struck by that.
- Um, and maybe it's because, you know, it's our allies that did it, I don't
- know. But it, it's a, it's one, it was a never ever moment, but two,
- you know, this was this thing that, that we thought would be a huge deal in,
- in the
- history of warfare. It happened and, um,
- you, I mean, you saw reporting in the lower, uh,
- you know, not in major
- media. Uh, you, you... And that, that really struck me.
- Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. And I wanna pivot to the, the, the
- data side of things in just a moment.
- But before we leave, um, Ukraine, i- is there any other,
- um, kind of takeaways that you think,
- uh, warrant special emphasis? 'Cause there's been a lot of, uh,
- you know, a lot of
- coverage about the, um, you know, about the ISR, the
- targeting, the, the, um, the tactical strikes, but,
- but not really so much of in, in the mainstream press about the
- strategic
- implications. Uh, you know, is there any- anything else you wanna foot stomp on
- how, um, the, you know, the transformations
- that we're seeing in that conflict?
- I think, um,
- you know, there's a lot of questions about,
- you know, one, how do we continue to support Ukraine
- best?
- Um,
- and, you know, I'm worried about some things going on
- right now around
- that, that's, that's pretty obvious, but we won't go into it.
- Um, but second,
- what are we, but also what are adversaries
- learning from Ukraine?
- Mm-hmm.
- Um, there is a lot of interesting lessons
- on how small democratic
- states can both defend themselves against
- aggressive authoritarian neighbors,
- and how can the rest of the world of
- democracies aid those small democratic states.
- And in particular, the goal is...
- There, there is a failure in Ukraine.
- The failure is that we were not able to deter the invasion,
- right? So if we're thinking about...
- And I'm obviously making a reference to, you know, if we're thinking about other
- states, it's, it's the Baltics, it's a Taiwan.
- Mm-hmm.
- You know, what i- there's a project on the, um, uh, US
- military side on, you know, this concept of what does winning look
- like. Um, well, winning in the Pacific doesn't look
- like defeating, you know, PLA forces on the
- beaches of Taiwan. Winning looks like the PLA
- each and every day deciding, "You know, it's just not a good day to go to war."
- Um,
- and so I think there's a series of lessons of how can we
- aid these states in becoming, um,
- such a, a thorny challenge, um,
- in many ways. So there's military people in the room,
- they're, they're familiar
- with the idea of, um, anti-access aerial denial.
- It's been how we've talked about the problem of China.
- They're creating these bubbles that we can't get into.
- It's actually, I think, th- we should embrace the, the, the
- sort of the opposite. We're the ones,
- we're the nations that
- don't want to change-- We don't wanna go out and seize territory.
- We like
- the static situation. So we're the ones
- that should be thinking about how can we
- best create anti-access aerial denial for our
- allies and for us. And one of the other th- and so as part of
- this is to recognize that there's a variety of ways that we
- can aid both our forces, but also our allies, but also to
- understand that a number of these allies do not have the same
- budgets that we do. So there are certain capabilities and
- systems that, um, w-
- Are great, but we can't go to a small partner
- state and say, "You ought to buy this." Um, and it may
- even do them a disservice. And, uh, even if it will
- drive down the per unit price for us, um, it
- may not help us strategically. Uh, so kinda, um, coming out of
- Ukra- Ukraine, I think this question of how can we aid
- better in creating bubbles around them,
- um, that are anti-access aerial denials.
- And referencing back to, you know, what's happened in Ukraine is,
- they don't have
- a, a massive air force, they don't have a massive, uh,
- navy. Uh, their army has been hard-pressed,
- and yet they've held their own quite well
- against, um, you know, the, this second-best
- adversary nation for us.
- Mm-hmm.
- Um, and, uh, so how can we model on that? How can we learn it?
- And I know, uh, I've seen a couple questions come in from
- our virtual audience, so
- let us come back to some of the, the denial and the, and the,
- the sort of counter
- UAS, uh, strategies. We'll get to that in a, in a few minutes.
- The, um, the, the data side, when you talk
- about... Uh, I mean, stay with Ukraine for a moment, the,
- the kind of,
- you know, jury-rigged situational awareness, um,
- solutions
- that, uh, that the Ukrainian forces have put
- together to,
- um, uh, to share and disseminate, like, the, um,
- you know, the, the data that's coming from these systems
- is pretty
- remarkable. And, um, uh, but when you talk
- about
- footage that drones can capture, or certainly when you get to situations
- like in
- your writing where there are, um, you know, there's the
- delivery bots, there's, um, targeted individual,
- uh, aerial systems. There are sort of autonomous
- flocks out there monitoring. The, the, uh,
- you know, on the one hand, there's
- potentially a level of, of ISR and situational awareness
- that's never been possible before, but it comes through very loud
- and clear in the
- book that, um, that fire hose is really hard to-
- Yeah
- ... hard to deal with. And, you know, you talked about how do humans work with
- these systems in a, in a better way.
- I'm just curious, can you talk about that data overload challenge
- and what happens
- as these streams begin to multiply?
- Yeah. So a lot of different ways to think about
- that.
- You know, what we were trying to project in the book
- is that, you know, uh,
- one of the, you know, the opportunity of getting more data
- that's often sold to
- us, uh, isn't the, the, uh, you know, bucket of gold at
- the end. It, it's actually creates a different set of
- challenges, and it's a set of
- challenges whether you are in the book, um, a, a law
- enforcement. You know, there's so much now data coming at
- you, and you can, um, you know, it's everything from,
- uh, I can be overwhelmed by that data, or I can,
- um, fall into the, uh, mistake of, like,
- becoming consumed with focusing on one flow of data and there's the
- other flows of data out there. To, there's issues of,
- um, uh, should I trust the different
- types and sources of data? Um, which one is more important than another?
- Um, and again, I just described a situation for,
- you know, we, we paint a,
- of a scene of a, of a law enforcement officer entering,
- entering Union
- Station, and you've got all the data kinda coming
- at them.
- But, by the way, it's the same thing, you know, which will...
- is starting to play out, um, as you go into a grocery store.
- Uh, and, and think, and that's... Wait till, you know,
- Apple and, and you wearing your goggles and,
- you know,
- everything coming at you. Um, oh, by the way, it's your social
- relationships. Uh, um, you know, if you've...
- I think most of our kids face a data overload problem right now.
- Um, it's the same on the battlefield.
- So you've got that phenomena. Um, I think
- a- another... And a- to go back to that story of the, the argument with the
- Air Force, um, general,
- I think what you're putting your finger on, and this is what I was arguing back
- then, it leads more and more organizations to go further and
- further down that model from remote operation to more
- autonomy.
- Mm-hmm.
- Because one of the old arguments against, um, unmanned
- systems was actually personnel problems.
- And I remember, you know, they'd said, "Well, you know, uh, for every,
- um, combat air patrol with a large UAS, um,
- I need..." And the number was 68 people behind it,
- 68 analysts to sift through all the information to fly it, et
- cetera. And they're... And so you'd get this kind of like,
- you know, "I'd love to
- buy them, but I can't afford them because of the
- people costs." And
- that was very obviously a dodge because it was like, that's...
- The, the problem is your model of one system to
- 68 people behind it.
- Instead, let's get to a model of one-to-one or
- even better-
- One to 68, yeah
- ... many to one, and that's where we're headed.
- And that's the same phenomena if you're a, a, a delivery
- company. Um, so I think it, it sends you down that.
- The difference for the civilian
- private industry or public sector use is, um,
- there's an adversary most likely to go after your comms.
- Um, and
- that, again, I think drives you down the autonomy-
- Mm-hmm
- ... uh,
- direction more. Any thinking adversary, and again we could
- predict this and it, and it happened, is if they're looking at someone
- operating, you know, off a string,
- you can either hit the system or I can cut the string.
- And I can cut the string either through, um, EW or
- I can take away a- access to something that it needs, GPS.
- It's a very obvious response. We kind of kidded
- ourselves that it wouldn't happen, um, and it's happened.
- But what my point is, you're, again, used to have...
- There used to be these arguments. "Well, but, you know, what if they do jamming?"
- And the answer is, "Well-
- We do counter and I make it more able to operate on its own.
- I can-- Or I can go back to the way we did things
- in the
- nineteen-nineties. Which is your choice?
- Um, and so again, I think the having an adversary
- drives you more down that pathway of more
- autonomy. I will add the one sort of I, I, I'm sort of thinking through it in front
- of you. Um, there will be kind of an adversarial
- problem
- of, um, bandwidth on the civilian side, where, you know, it may not be
- I'm being actively jammed or, you know, the Russians are taking away my
- GPS. It may just be, uh, you know, going back to creaky US
- infrastructure. Uh, do I have enough bandwidth to
- operate my system?
- If you're, if you're Border Patrol or Forest Service, it's-
- Well, there's, there's, uh, either I don't have access
- or there's so many
- other people going around, they're sort of sucking up my, my use of
- bandwidth. Um, again, you can either say, "I'm not gonna get
- the advantages of the technology because I'm worried about this,"
- or I'm gonna have it on, um, you know, um,
- fail mode, or I can say, "I want a system that can still
- operate if it doesn't have access to bandwidth."
- And I, I, I'm actually gonna go to a, a question from the virtual audience that
- popped in literally as, as you were talking about that, um,
- about this question of how, um, UAS systems can be
- operated in, in denied areas where traditional
- communications, uh,
- are being degraded or, or denied. I mean, what I heard you say is that more
- autonomy, it may not be the entire answer, but it's a, it's a huge part of it.
- So there's, there's, um, you know, basically think about the,
- roughly you have to deal with
- either upgrades on the sensor side
- and/or the autonomy, the software side.
- So the sensor side, um,
- can it gain information about the environment
- around it in a way that is different from what is being
- denied to it? Uh, so can it operate
- visually? Can it o- you know, there's a lot of really cool things going
- on in
- quantum and the light and, you know.
- So and again, um, uh, how am I-- how is
- it if I, if I've cut that cord, um, can it gather information
- about the world around it on its own in an alternative way?
- And/or can it react and operate
- independently based on that information?
- Um, and, you know, that's much of what we're seeing
- right now. Um, uh, there's also
- a separate thing, um, again, I don't think the civilian
- systems have to worry about this, uh, but there is on the, the
- military and maybe, um, uh,
- some law enforcement. There's also, you know, not just EW jamming, I'm, I'm
- going after the s-signal. There's some, you know, I wanna just literally overwhelm
- the software-
- Mm-hmm
- ... fry it in a, in a non, uh, uh, you know, uh,
- in a, in a layman's term. Um, so there's hardening that you,
- uh, may need as well. Um, and again, but the, the
- most is the, this is gonna be, it's a constant back and forth, back
- and forth.
- I mean, you even see this with, um, you know, jamming.
- Jamming's not-- you can either jam everything, but
- if you jam everything, go
- back to how I said the Russians and the Ukrainians are using them.
- If you jam everything, you're taking away your own system,
- so that's that kind of
- back and forth. Um, but, uh, or I'm
- jamming certain things. Well, my counter to that
- is to hop frequencies or
- whatever, right? Or I don't have GPS, fine.
- I have recognized waypoints. Or, um, to, you
- know, this, the lethal autonomy, um, I've got it
- preloaded with this is what a Russian tank looks like.
- Mm-hmm.
- Go get it.
- Good. So
- y- you mentioned earlier that, you know, one of the questions we could ask is, is,
- is bigger always better? And I think, you know, it's pretty obvious from, you
- know, from your tone and a couple of references that, uh, it's,
- the answer is
- certainly not always and, and maybe not even all that often, uh,
- anymore. That, that's one of the premises of, of, uh,
- DOD's replicator, uh, effort right now.
- You know, sort of, you know, small, many smart, few other
- adjectives we could throw in there.
- But I'm, I'm interested in your, your high-level take on that effort.
- Is it, is it asking the right questions and
- is it, is it really,
- um, is it influencing what's happening, uh,
- on the ground's not the right framing of it, but what's actually happening out at
- the, at the mission edge yet?
- Yeah. So I, you know, I need to be clear on the,
- kinda the casting
- doubt on is bigger better.
- What I'm
- concerned about is the reasons for
- the choices that we are making with a v- you know, so
- at one point it was we're not-- it was a m-
- man versus unmanned discourse.
- Mm-hmm.
- Now it's a, okay, and again, whether, you know, it's Navy, Air
- Force, Army, um, it's, okay, we--
- remember when we didn't want 'em, we, we want 'em.
- But now it's this pathway of, um,
- I worry that we're choosing the types that we're most comfortable
- with, that most,
- oddly enough, that, that, that cause the least disruption to our
- current
- organization, our current acquisition system,
- our current
- military culture. Um, it's a lot easier to,
- uh, well, if I'm gonna use,
- um, uh, UAS, it's a lot easier to say, "Well, it's gonna be flying
- alongside my F-35." And it's, um, "Don't
- worry, pilots,
- squadron model stays the same," to, "Don't worry, it really
- doesn't change industry, um, what you supply me."
- Or if you're, you know, I'm-- we're using air models, let's,
- we got some Army folks
- right there. Um, it's if I'm thinking about robotics, ground
- vehicles. Well, you know, the, if it's the size, shape, form of
- a tank, um, if that's l- less
- disruptive. I mean, one of the fascinating things I find, um,
- is, uh,
- f- The army is willing to envision
- robotic tanks, but to the military culture side, it's
- not willing to envision a change in the number of people in an infantry
- squad. Um, that's where we're, we're at right now, right?
- And we could have the same, you know, Navy, uh, okay,
- 3,000 ton, basically the size of a World War II
- destroyer.
- Mm-hmm.
- Uh, and so I'm concern- You know, are we making the choice because of,
- um,
- who we are right now?
- Going back to that example of the blitzkrieg,
- the British are the ones who invented the tank.
- The British
- then in the 1920s and early '30s did all the
- smart things that, that we're doing right now in terms of,
- um,
- testing. They, they had this, called the Experimental Mechanized Force.
- They're the ones who figured out the concept of the blitzkrieg.
- But they chose not to adopt it
- because of their own military culture.
- Um, if you go back and read the diaries of they...
- Just basically it was the, the model of, of the
- best ways of using tanks was a threat to the regimental
- system, and the regimental system for Brits
- is like, you know, it, it's, it's, it's
- your... It's not just a unit, it's like your culture.
- You know, your grandfather's grandfather was in
- that regiment.
- And so they ultimately decide regiment matters more than optimal
- military output.
- Mm-hmm.
- What are we doing now?
- And again, that's, that's my concern on the bigger, smaller.
- Um, uh, you had another question. I, I went on a total, like-
- No, it's-
- No, no, no. What was the last one? It was, uh-
- So it was just of, um, you know, whether, whether the,
- you know, whether the-
- Oh, Replicator. Replicator
- ... Replicator is doing is, is like framing the,
- the right conversation.
- So, so I'm, I'm, I'm a fan of Replicator.
- I love the vision that, um, Kath Hicks and her team have put
- out there of saying, you know, one of the lessons coming out of Ukraine,
- et cetera, is this. Let's put some energy.
- It, you know, it's a leadership vision.
- Um, so very, very positive on it. I think the two challenges
- for Replicator, um,
- one,
- how much money is on the table?
- Uh, and it's still not clear to
- me, and it, and I think industry. And industry at
- the end, end of the day is going to make a decision, you know,
- is Replicator a
- $2 billion? Is it a $20 billion? Is it a 70
- or whatever? A- and, and so if I'm, if I'm on the industry
- side,
- I, I can either make a bet hoping it's going
- to be of some scale,
- or m- most industry is gonna wait till I get a sense
- of the scale-
- Mm-hmm
- ... to pivot towards it. Um, and that's reasonable enough.
- And then the second is how do we
- take Replicator and lash it up to more and more
- use in the field, like a Ukraine?
- Remember I was talking with, not someone from this company, but a,
- another company
- and, and they were saying
- basically, um, Ukraine's the, the ultimate marketplace right
- now for selling to the US military.
- And it's both because if the Ukrainians like it, it,
- it validates it. Secondly,
- it's, it's like, um, you know, the, the do- I'm a big NBA fan.
- It's like the doubts about, um, the, the Cleveland Cavaliers right now have a
- great
- win-loss record, but no one trusts them because they,
- they have, they did
- poorly in the playoffs. No one's gonna trust them till they,
- they d- they're in the
- playoffs again and they succeed. It's the same thing.
- You know, operating against Russia means it's not
- only working, but it's
- working against an adversary that's trying hard against it.
- So one, how can we lash up more of the Replicator
- initiatives either to use out
- in Ukraine or to the experimental tests that are going
- on operationalizing it, that then gets it over
- that kind of valley of death by the users in the
- field, the theater commanders, et cetera, coming back and saying, "I really,
- really liked it. I really found use of it." The,
- the parallel of, um, if you're a
- Navy person, Task Force 59, which is, was in the Middle East and, you know,
- basically, uh, gained thousands of hours of
- experience with small
- y- y- small unmanned surface vessels and, um, unmanned
- aerial systems, and by getting the thousands
- of hours of experience in the field,
- it, one, served as a proof case. Uh, two, what was
- really neat about it is
- w- we began to discover new needs...
- Sorry, new approaches with it
- that even the companies had not planned for.
- Um, it also worked out a lot of the
- adversarial problems.
- Um,
- we figured to your, um, autonomy and, uh, ISR thing,
- um,
- the Iranians kidnapped a couple of our systems and,
- um, it actually proved really useful, uh, that they did
- that because it led to everything from how do we figure out our policy
- around, um, when someone kidnaps it, to how do we, um,
- track the system to make sure, uh, that, um,
- we know when it's being kidnapped?
- Uh, the, the first kidnapping of the naval
- drones, the only way they figured out that it was happening was they were
- sail drones and then they, someone, v- a human, not
- a system-
- Mm-hmm
- ...
- very smartly noticed that the drones were going against the wind,
- and it was 'cause the Iranians had lashed it on the top of a freighter and were
- towing it away. That was the only indicator that we got
- that someone was stealing
- our dr- But, and then learn from that. Okay, yeah.
- Eventually program the, uh, you know, escape and evasion algorithm-
- [laughs]
- ... and we'll be good to go. Um, uh, so
- I-
- as someone who spent the bulk of my career as a writer a- and, and then
- by avocation, I've always been a, a tech nerd, I'm fascinated by,
- uh, the, the useful fiction initiative
- that you're doing and how you work
- with a range of government organizations to, yeah, to kind of-
- Just the ball's not the right way, but to really to, to think, uh, you know,
- to
- think a little bit over the horizon on things.
- I wonder, you just talk a little bit about
- that work.
- Like, I mean, how you came to that model, and maybe a couple examples of, of,
- um, uh, you know, where you're helping, uh, organizations
- explore what comes next.
- Sure. So the origin point for it was, um, a book that August Cole and I
- did called Ghost Fleet. And, um, Ghost Fleet,
- uh, August was a defense reporter for the Wall
- Street Journal. I had...
- Is referenced in a lot of different work on nonfiction technology, working with the
- military. Um, and, uh,
- at the time though, we, we were frustrated by two
- things. Um, one, this is back in twenty twelve-ish period,
- all the focus within the national security community was
- on, um, counterinsurgency, counterterrorism.
- Um, this was gonna be the future. Uh, and similarly, the discourse
- around China was, well, we can embrace them to be,
- in the terminology of the age,
- was a responsible international partner.
- And we just didn't buy that.
- Mm-hmm.
- Um, you know, historically, uh, out of the 10 times there have been great
- powers rising, nine times a
- competition and conflict, uh, ensued.
- The only time it didn't happen was, uh, UK to US, and that was
- because the UK was concerned about another great power rising-
- Mm-hmm
- ... which was the Germans. Um, and so we
- said, you know, we think there's gonna be...
- And it sounds silly to say it 'cause it's now on everybody's mind.
- We were like, "We think the great power competition
- is gonna come back, maybe even
- conflict." But secondly, there's all these new technologies,
- drones,
- cyber, supply chain security issues, that
- mean that this will be different than the way we thought
- about competition and conflict with the Soviet Union.
- And so we decided the best way to share that was through this idea
- of smashing up novel and nonfiction.
- And, um, it obviously sold well, but what a lot of folks don't know
- is it turned out to be the most influential work of our careers.
- Um,
- got to, uh, you know, e- everything from brief it's real war
- lessons to, um, the president, uh, the, the, um,
- the joint chiefs in the tank, six testimonies to Congress.
- Um, but it wasn't just that. It actually changed policies in
- ways that, um,
- m- m- doesn't often happen. And, and, you know, you made a joke about think tank
- land before. Um, there were three US government
- investigations launched to keep things that we had in
- our book from ever coming true. So, you know, if you, if you're in the
- intelligence game, the goal is often not to predict the future,
- it's to prevent a
- future. You know, so, uh, you-
- [coughs]
- ... you would rather
- prevent Pearl Harbor than predict Pearl Harbor.
- Sure.
- Um, to, uh, there's a bunch of things that came true because of the
- book. Um, and so it was a, a great experience.
- And so coming out of that, we figured out that this,
- this smoothie model
- could work with partners. And, um, as was referenced, we've done
- a variety of projects with governments around the world.
- Um, obviously enough, this technology area
- features a great deal for two reasons.
- And I th- and I think, um, it's important and maybe kind of as...
- and helps bring a capstone to this conversation.
- One is
- what we've been talking about. It's very obviously a technology that's
- being
- used in more. It's a technology of the present,
- it's a technology of the future,
- however you wanna frame it, right?
- But the second is
- the explainability problem.
- Pretty much, um, every organization and,
- and people who are using these technologies are trying to figure out,
- how do I tell the story of it? How do I tell the story
- of mmm,
- its possibilities and application for my enterprise
- or for my problem? Um, or
- it might be the flip side, how to tell the story of the threat that,
- that emanates from this new area. How do I get people to, to
- pay attention? How do I break through?
- Um, and so that's why I think we, we, you
- know, uh, so many of our projects keep coming back
- to,
- um, unmanned systems. It's, it's not just because, oh, you know,
- Peter knows
- something about it. It's not just because it's a, it's a cool
- new tech area. I think a, a challenge that we all have to kinda collectively
- wrestle with is it's a tech area that still has a narrative
- issue. Uh, and it still needs to f- you know, it still faces the
- problem of how does it best tell its story, and that's why I think we're
- often working with partners on it.
- Good. Well, I have more questions, but I don't wanna monopolize the, the
- conversation. I know we've got a long list from,
- from online, and I've seen people
- sort of starting to, to gesture that they're interested.
- So let's, let's open it up to the, um, to the audience, and, and Walker has the
- microphone. So let's, let's start here in the room, uh,
- if there are folks that
- have questions for Peter.
- Yeah, just they'll, they'll turn it on. You're good.
- They got it? All right, thank you. So first, thanks for, uh, speaking.
- Um, missing National Guard Bureau army side,
- um, UAS lead.
- Um, with the Ukraine, uh, Ukrainian-Russian conflict, we see
- that Russia is changing their doctrine based off of the lessons learned with
- unmanned aircraft. Right now, they're looking at, um, RAS platoons and
- stuff. Have you noticed a change in whether it's
- our peer and near peer
- adversaries or even our allies, a change in
- doctrine as far as the way that they're operating?
- And on a second note, since you're at the War College, um,
- are you seen as starting
- to implement that into our exercises as
- well, since we look at how our adversaries,
- their doctrine and how they use them?
- Are we starting to implement that in the way that we're doing our war
- fighters and other exercises? Thank you.
- Great question. Um-
- I think it depends on the, the
- service
- and even kind of the parts, uh, communities in the service.
- And that, that is ob- obviously a problem for doctrine because
- ideally our doctrine is joint because of the,
- the kind of the multi-domain aspects of it.
- And secondly, you know, you, it, it's not great if, you know, whatever
- the tanker community's making a change, but the artillery community's not, et
- cetera, right? Um, but so, you know, my answer is service
- dependent, even community dependent.
- But for the most part, if I'm to make a characterization,
- I think we
- are modulating our doctrine,
- but not changing our doctrine. And
- that parallels this kind of discourse of, you know, um,
- well, but, but artillery still matters.
- You're like, yeah, and, you know, you could have said the sa- you know,
- I imagine
- like people talking about this in, um, you know,
- 1917 as the tanks are coming out and someone's like,
- "Yeah, but you know, there's still trenches and there's still
- artillery." And you're like, "Yes, no one's not saying that,
- but this tank thing kind of matters.
- And oh, by the way, the mobility means you,
- you have new doctrinal
- possibilities, et cetera," right?
- And I think we're kind of, we're stuck in our discourse on
- that in the,
- the, the, the narrative world and, and the doctrinal world.
- Um, I see, you know, more and more UAS, you
- know, in various exercises for the
- UA- US. But, um, bluntly, it's still in the
- onesies and twosies or the, the fivesies and tensies.
- Um, it's not in the, uh, you know, if we're thinking about the threat
- side, "Okay, how do I deal with 1,000 coming at me as
- opposed to
- like one flying over my command post and making things really, really
- tough already," right? Or, um,
- the individual, I mean, you know, y'all have probably seen the
- videos, individual Russian soldiers being targeted
- by UAS. Um, uh, oh, by the way, back
- to your ISR thing.
- Mm-hmm.
- I, I should have mentioned it, um, you know, and this is another part.
- How have we figured out how to bring in all that information,
- including open source
- information? The, the, the info overload issue for the
- Ukrainians is it's not just what they're gathering
- through official, it's also, you
- know, they report they're getting around 10,000
- different items of
- information every single day-
- Mm-hmm
- ... that are being provided to them, everything from
- commercial UAS to someone's social media feed.
- Um, and it's providing strategic
- awareness, but it's also, you know, they're using
- that to hit a s- individual Russian soldier
- in one foxhole. I don't know if we've made that kind of change in both
- how we
- bring in information, but also if we think about the threat side.
- Mm-hmm.
- I think it's been a lot of modulation.
- Um, and, uh,
- again, I, I worry of, because clearly, uh, other
- threat actors, you know, there's a huge initiative within, um, the
- PLA to learn the lessons from
- Ukraine like any other military. Uh,
- I, I did an article on this about, about, about a year back looking at some of the
- PLA learning and their own doc where they've talked about it.
- Like any other military, some parts of it are
- great. The reforms that we already were doing are perfect for what
- we, we need to see, and you see a lot of
- that out of the US military too.
- So for one example, which is a,
- it's a smart learning on them. It's not good for us.
- They basically said one of the key failures of the Russians was, um,
- unrealistic training, and another was they don't have a good NCO
- corps. And then the PLA said, "But fortunately, we've been
- trying to get a better NCO corps, and our training's getting more and more
- realistic." Pat on the back. The other lesson that's a really
- interesting one that the PLA took from
- Ukraine is they think the Russians went
- too easy with their fires.
- They're like, "They're just not shooting enough stuff at
- the Ukrainians."
- And, and the reason is the, the
- Russians... There was two reasons.
- One, the Russians
- for the early part of the conflict thought they would take over Ukraine, so they,
- they, they were not flattening parts of it
- 'cause they thought they would be the
- ruler soon. And then now it's they don't have
- enough to... The, the PLA has basically said, "Russians,
- you're going
- too easy. Why are you only firing two missiles?
- Why are you only sending two drones over there?
- It ought to be 100." So the, the, it's sort of this
- funny/scary that the, the PLA looks at what the Russians
- are doing and saying, "You've, you, you're just taking it easy on the
- Ukrainians.
- Why don't you do more?"
- Yeah, and that answer in how to deal with the,
- the, the scale of
- moving from onesie, twosies to 100 or 1,000
- goes to a question from, uh, from one of our online viewers, which is,
- uh, uh,
- when it comes to autonomy and, and swarming or these mass deployments,
- what, what
- do you assess as the most dangerous future capability there?
- Is it just the sheer numbers, or do we need to think about it in a
- different way?
- I think it, it's, it's the sheer numbers.
- And, um, to give a different example of it,
- um, you know, what played out for, uh, Israel, uh,
- on October 7th.
- Mm-hmm.
- Um, you know, Israel had had
- literally decades of warning related to, uh, not
- just overall Hamas threats, but threats from small
- UAS. You know, as I referenced, the first use of it, um, uh,
- was by Hezbollah in 2004. So if anyone should have been aware
- of it, it was them. Um, on that
- day, among
- many things that played out, they were overwhelmed by numbers,
- overwhelmed by numbers of people, but also overwhelmed by numbers of
- small UAS.
- And basically it's 'cause, um, Hamas knows basic
- math. They knew exactly how many Iron
- Dome could take down, and they-
- Sent more
- ... sent more.
- The PLA also knows basic math.
- Um, and so the challenge, um, is,
- uh, either
- you get overwhelmed and it gets through and strikes
- you,
- or
- you, you go, you know they call, you go Winchester.
- I, I, you know, so you, you, I, I, I empty my magazines in sh-
- trying to defend them, and then I've gotta get out before they
- get
- me. And the, for a, for a, a China
- scenario, um, you know, so let's, let's use a non, uh, uh, uh,
- let's use a, a example of a, um,
- you know, going back to that example of, like, a Aegis class warship, you know, one
- of our premier systems. Um,
- it, let's say it has 100%,
- uh, success rate firing off its missiles
- against incoming
- aerial threats,
- which is not gonna happen, but let's just say it does.
- It still goes empty magazines, and
- it can't be reloaded unless it really goes back
- to Hawaii, which gives, even if they don't sink it, which would be
- the worst case for us, it still gives the adversary this window
- in which
- they get the equivalent of air or naval superiority.
- And take that example of a, of a multibillion-dollar warship,
- and I think you could replicate it for
- a, a brigade combat team or, um, whatever.
- Uh, so the, the sheer number, um, uh,
- issue, I think worries me a, a great deal.
- Great. Uh, other questions in the room for Peter?
- Yes, sir. We'll bring the mic
- back to you. Thank you.
- Uh, hi, Peter. Creighton from ADS.
- Uh, we're a channel partner with Skydio.
- Uh, my question is, or my thesis is that 30 years
- ago, uh, the DOD, the US government, was a net exporter of
- technology, right? The heads-up display you've, uh,
- probably somebody has in their
- car here, um, to, uh, graphical user
- interface, right? Which we now all take for granted on our
- phones or on our
- computers. Those are government inventions,
- and now that's
- flipped, right? Um, Skydio was invested w-
- by private money and still owned by private equity, owned by the
- shareholders. Um, and, and they're developing new
- technology on their own dime. What does that mean for the
- future of not just conflict, but for technology?
- Wow, big one. Um, so
- there's, um, again, like everything, there's, there's positives and
- negatives. Um, I think the positive is the, is the discourse around
- innovation, the flexibility, uh, the, you know,
- and, uh, uh, it's, it's,
- we see examples of this a- all over, uh, where, you know,
- private industry is able to move quicker than government.
- And, and it's not to beat up on government.
- There's, you know, I'm a taxpayer.
- I, I don't want government in certain areas
- to be too risky.
- I, I want that private industry to make, to take the risk if
- they want to get the reward from it.
- Um, uh, the proliferation of multiple different
- approaches that happens across private industry rather than a, a
- single winner-take-all model, which is what so many of government acquisition
- programs. Um, so there's, there's that benefit of, um,
- innovation. Um,
- they, uh,
- f- there's two flip sides to be concerned
- about.
- Um, one is,
- um, industry, for good reason, has to be responsible to
- the owners and shareholders, so they are going
- to
- chase areas that are best for the return.
- And if the military has not caught up to
- it or isn't headed in that direction, it may not be
- where they,
- they invest. Um, so if, you know, and I'm in private
- industry and I'm,
- and I have to choose between X and Y, if X is more profitable for me or
- shows a bigger growth payoff, and that's a particular issue for working
- with the DOD. Um, you know, is this gonna be something that has that
- exponential curve up that's, uh, or is it like, like that?
- Um, you know, the, most VCs don't want a dividend
- paying model, right? They want that rapid curve.
- And/or, um, the timeframe, um,
- the level of patience
- in a lot of, you know, the VC investor world.
- You know, I, I've,
- I want to see my returns on my investment within,
- you know, whatever, three years, five years maybe if I'm really,
- really patient.
- Um, it's tough to say, "Well, I'm gonna wait," and go back to my story.
- Like, you could see the trends happening in
- 2005, but it isn't
- until Ukraine comes along that you get the test case
- that jumps it forward, right?
- It's tough to have that kind of patience.
- Um,
- the other challenge, um, and now I'm gonna be
- controversial, is, um, private industry.
- Uh,
- it depends on, um, the, it, owners
- and some owners can be really mercurial,
- uh, is my kind way of saying it. Um,
- and you, uh, you can have, in-
- industry will decide what to do based on what's best for it.
- Um, if it is a company that is, for example,
- dependent on large amounts of business with China,
- uh, or, uh, we'll just, I'll, I'll throw it out there more directly.
- I just did a, a article on, um, uh-
- Satellite provided internet. Um, we have a
- duality happening right now, which as a science fiction author, it
- sounds... You know, I wouldn't get away with making it up.
- But, um, on one hand, we have China putting up
- its own satellite-enabled network.
- Uh, it, it just had a series of launches.
- It plans to go operational kind of into '24, mid-25.
- Uh, so the Chinese version of Starlink.
- And then simultaneous to that, um, we have a
- system that we and our allies are highly reliant on
- where, um, it's owned by someone whose
- entire personal fortune is wrapped up within the CCP,
- uh, both in terms of if the, if the production
- of his systems, and it's the most profitable
- marketplace for his sales, and someone who has been
- incredibly combative with pretty much everyone online
- except the CCP. Go check out his tweets or Xs
- about them. Um,
- and, uh, someone who has, uh, intervened
- on multiple occasions to keep the Ukrainians from utilizing access
- to the system in certain locations, including he took away, uh...
- There was an opportunity to, um, sink most of the Russian Black
- Sea's fleet. Uh, if you're a, um, naval historian,
- we could have had the drone version of the Battle of Toronto,
- and Elon took it away from us, um, just by taking away access
- for Starlink to, um, you may have seen in the news,
- it turns out that not just for Starlink, but for Star Shield, the US system,
- allegedly according to US congressmen, um,
- service members in Taiwan are not able to access it.
- That sounds like fiction.
- That comes out of
- reliance on...
- The, the appeal of private industries is I have a vibrant
- marketplace. If you are reliant on one actor,
- you better be really, really, really certain of that actor.
- So there's a,
- I think, a really interesting question
- that came from the virtual audience,
- especially because it came from someone, uh, uh, in the Air Force, and it kind of
- builds on, uh, on what you were just saying. Of what...
- They were asking, "What is the biggest threat to the UAS
- industry?" And I mean, you
- mentioned maybe some self-inflicted wounds is one of the risks, but what, what are
- the other, what are the other, um, risks you think we need to be monitoring
- and
- looking at?
- Wow, that'd be a better question to ask, like, our, you know-
- [laughs]
- ... the other folks. You know, kind of, um, what, you know, what are your big
- challenges? Um, I think it's probably, uh, you know, some of the things that we've
- referenced before. Uh, it's, um,
- you know, unlocking, uh,
- appropriate...
- In the absence of regulation and/or too much regulation-
- Mm-hmm
- ... it's created, back to the kind of the question around
- industry, um,
- am I willing to make that big bet? Am...
- Can I scale? What does the marketplace actually look
- like
- on the, on the civilian use side? We've got a variety of examples that
- we know can be done, but if I'm on the industry
- side, I want to be able to say, you know, it's, it's not just being used by
- this one, insert name here, police department,
- agricultural corporation, um, fire and
- rescue, uh, whatever. I want it to be scaled across
- hundreds or thousands of them. Same thing for not just one National
- Guard unit test program. I need to scale it.
- And, um, we, we are still in the United States to
- work through a lot of the, the issues surrounding that.
- Mm-hmm.
- Um, and, and for good reason. But I think that's,
- that, that there's that regulatory challenge
- that's holding back the industry, uh, that, you know, I think you can
- kind of feel in the air this sense of like, but once it happens, you know, like
- that. Um, the other is, again, parallel
- to, you know, what a, a phone maker faces to whatever
- is back to the China issue. Um, h- much of the story,
- and again, there's people in this room who
- are far more expert than I, one of the
- challenges for the small US market overall
- globally was there was, you know,
- major Chinese manufacturing. We can have a discussion around
- the civil military fusion model and are they truly independent, et cetera, et
- cetera. But basically, it's a marketplace where you are in
- competition with, um, a authoritarian state
- that's been a major producer of these systems.
- And again, that goes back to like, um, you know, if we're thinking about supply
- chain vulnerabilities for us at home to, uh, you know,
- the, the Ukrainians, you know,
- they've had to navigate this actively.
- You know, l- like, for a while, they were using Chinese-made systems,
- and they're
- like, "Hold it. What about the software?" to,
- "What about my access?" So, um, that
- to me would be the two biggest challenges.
- Um,
- yeah. I, I-
- Okay.
- Yeah.
- Very good. Uh, and we are coming up on time,
- but I want to make sure that we do get
- in as, as many questions as we can. So, uh, l- last call for, for
- questions in the room for Peter.
- And yeah, Mark.
- Hi, I'm Steve Lowther with the US Army Test
- Center, uh, in
- Aberdeen, Maryland. And, uh, I head up the UAS
- and data visualization teams, and one of the things that we're always
- looking for is how do we distribute the digital twins that we're
- developing from our UAS systems, and how you might see that
- technology moving forward, uh, to get that info to the stakeholder?
- The
- two issues that I would, I would throw out on that, and you're,
- you know,
- probably, uh, aware of, and we already talked about one, which
- is the, the
- data overload problem. Um, and
- all the-
- [coughs]
- Uh, and again, there's actually a great amount of
- research within the
- civilian consumer market side about both-
- Um, how to help with overload and sometimes to, like, take
- advantage of it based on, you know, who we are as
- humans. Um,
- the fact that the alert, you know, like on social media where it's, uh,
- uh, you have a message and it's in red is not because of happenstance.
- It's, you know, because they want time on platform.
- So, so first is we talked about data overload.
- The second, um, is
- to understand the timeline between
- our/your research and development and deployment of the
- system to the end user and what that end
- user will be-- expect as the norm.
- To put it a different way,
- um, the first wave of a lot of these systems,
- uh, there was this...
- You know, first there was kind of the bulky DoD
- yuck version, and then there was this, well, let's copy
- Xbox. Let's copy video game platforms.
- Um,
- and there's a generation of kids now that are like,
- "What is this old stuff?" That we're like, "Oh, but it's cool video game-like." It
- was video game-like when I was a kid, right?
- And, um, so keeping a pace
- with
- what is the, the user interface, um,
- that the
- member of the military has already been trained up on,
- that was the appeal of using the old kinda joystick Xbox model.
- It was this idea that like, you know, Sony and others already did all the
- training for them. They walked in and unlike, you know,
- needing to figure out how
- do you operate an M16, you put it in their hand,
- and they could figure it out
- within seconds.
- It's not that way anymore because w-we're, we're giving them
- gear too often that's like old school video game model, so
- keeping a pace with that is the other because of just the,
- the long, you know, the
- timeline between when our research, when it gets out in the field,
- um, we're-- we have to stay with where private
- industry is
- headed with interfaces rather than thinking we're cool and cutting edge by
- having something that's dated.
- Um [clears throat] , and I know you have a plane to catch.
- We, I promised we'd let you go here in a
- minute.
- Uh, but there's one other question I wanna
- ask, uh, because I think it will
- feed nicely into the next, uh, panel, and it was, uh, one of our
- online, uh, viewers was asking about going back to the counter
- UAS-
- Mm-hmm
- ... questions. And, and sort of,
- uh, you talked a little bit about how you see
- it dev, um, developing as a, an,
- as an important military, uh, consideration, but
- if you could talk just a
- little bit more about that. And then I think the interesting part of
- the question
- is, um, how does cUAS, like, come into
- play when you're talking about non-military missions?
- So whether it's stadium security or, um, you know,
- maybe it's not counter but dealing with those bandwidth issues
- that you checked.
- What, what do the, what do the non-battlefield, uh,
- missioners need to be thinking about in this space?
- So I, I think it, it does have some parallels to
- what we talked about in terms of, like, if we're thinking about defending a
- military unit against UAS right now.
- Yeah.
- Um, the, the first is to understand the, the problem of
- scale. The barrier to entry is getting lower and
- lower, both because of the cost of the system,
- so it's easy for a
- threat actor, be it a state, a non-state actor, an individual,
- to gain it.
- Back to what he was bringing in,
- the skill level to utilize it. I don't have to be
- an expert bomb maker to deploy a small UAS.
- Right.
- The second is to understand that the threat is diverse.
- Um,
- not every scenario is someone flying a bomb in,
- which again, like, so it, it's harder to get the bomb than it
- is to get the small
- UAS right now.
- Right.
- It may be it causes damage just by, um,
- kinetic. I, I fly it through a
- window of a, of a, um, prominent, um,
- uh, leader, individual. I fly it into a crowd.
- Um, it... Does it-- I don't-- Maybe not...
- I don't kill hundreds, but I cause some major problems.
- Or, um, it may be it's there's an ISR
- issue for the adversary using it, gaining understanding of the
- threat. So don't just think about it as terms of
- a, like,
- you know,
- IED model. There's other threats that are out there.
- Um, the other part is to understand, um, our counters to it, you
- know, range from, um, same thing for us,
- EW, cyber, um, taking away
- access to bandwidth, kinetic kill, um, or even
- better, getting earlier in the, in the cycle, um, to
- understand where they're there. Uh, but again, uh, it's a little bit,
- um... I think the difference on the civilian
- side for the counter
- UAS threat is, um, we don't want
- to kill all the, the possibilities, uh,
- by only worrying about the threat side of it.
- Mm.
- So to give a, um, example, uh,
- we thought this was gonna be a talk about the f-the future.
- I'm gonna mention the Ottoman Empire twice.
- [laughs]
- Uh, the first
- car bomb was used to go after the Ottoman
- sultan.
- That's how long there's been that threat of car bombs.
- N- The reaction could have been, "Well, ban all cars."
- We d- we figured out how to have a world with
- cars
- and also bad guys maybe using them for bad
- things.
- Right.
- That's the same thing we're gonna have to figure out related to these
- technologies. So, you know, yes, there's, there's definite threats we need to be
- aware of, scale, et cetera, but if we only focus on the threat side,
- we're taking away all the possibilities that we talked about of using them across
- pretty much every part of a, a commercial enterprise or public
- sector.
- Mm-hmm. Very good. Well, I think we're gonna have to, um,
- leave it there, but, but
- Peter, it's been a great conversation.
- Please join me in thanking Peter Singer for being here.
- Thanks. [audience applauding]
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1 Hr 25 Min 44 Sec