Military UAVs gaining intelligence, autonomy | Insight by Skydio
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been around since the 1960s. What’s new is the wide variety of platforms, from heavy, turbine-powered warbirds to lightweight, versatile quadcopters capable of many intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. What’s next, according to Mark Valentine, the president for global government at UAV maker Skydio: UAV’s that communicate among one another for greater effectiveness, but requiring less routine human input.
- [gentle music]
- We are with Mark Valentine. He's President, Global Government for
- Skydio. Good to have you with us.
- Thanks, Tom. Pleasure to be here.
- Skydio is a manufacturer in engineering of unmanned
- aerial vehicles. And just drawing on your experience here,
- but
- also in 30 years of the Air Force experience that you had prior to industry,
- a lot has changed in the concept and the usage and the
- effects of unmanned aerial vehicles relative to 40, 50 years
- ago. Indeed. What are we seeing now?
- Well, I think what we're seeing is the, the continuation of a historical arc
- where roughly 20-ish years ago, the start of the, uh,
- Afghan conflict after
- 9/11, we saw the MQ-1, an uncrewed system,
- uh, being used to real battlefield effect.
- And then over the, the course of the next 20-ish years, uh,
- obviously those were still quite expensive.
- We've seen technology continue to increase to where now we can pack that
- same sensor technology into a much smaller or small
- UAS-type system and achieve those same effects.
- And for years, I think many people looked at the small
- quadcopter-type
- drones as if they were toys of some sort.
- Uh, but probably roughly five-ish years ago,
- we started to realize that there were
- real utility in using these vehicles, and we've seen an adoption of that even
- more since the war in Ukraine.
- Got it. And how are they best used, and how, what's the state-of-the-art?
- So the state-of-the-art right now that we are seeing in Ukraine,
- where we have
- approximately 500 systems in operation right now, are, are the Ukrainian
- forces using them for tactical ISR, or intelligence, surveillance,
- and reconnaissance. So it is the age-old military problem of looking
- over the
- hill to see what the enemy is doing.
- So detect enemy formations, understand their scheme of maneuver,
- and improve
- the accuracy of targeting, or even seeing them being used in
- documentation of war crimes.
- Right. So that implies there is a great deal of communication
- interrelationship and not simply point-to-point imagery,
- correct?
- Correct. So, uh, what we are seeing is there is a link back from the
- vehicle to the controller, which is great, but the real value in
- those data are when they can connect to command and control systems.
- Which is why one of the things we are focused on at Skydio right now,
- in addition
- to getting better sensors on vehicles, increasing endurance, and increasing
- the AI that we have on the vehicle, is also increasing our ability to connect
- to battlefield systems, whether those are, uh, tactical assault
- controllers in the US Army, uh, these battlefield surveillance, uh,
- networks, so that people can actually make real use
- of those data.
- And so your platforms aren't kinetic.
- They are observing and ISR based.
- Correct.
- So that means you have to have a couple of things aboard.
- One is a camera or a sensor set.
- Yes.
- Is it always a camera, or could it be infrared sensing
- and so forth?
- And-
- It could be any sensor. So right now most of our vehicles
- are equipped with, uh,
- multi sensors, uh, an electro-optical sensor
- or a traditional camera,
- as well as a forward-looking infrared or IR sensor, uh, which allows
- day/night operation. And increasingly, with our next generation of
- vehicles, which we call the X10, we have created a,
- uh, uh, essentially changeable payload package,
- 'cause we envision
- that right now there are sensors we haven't even thought about
- that might be
- valuable in these surveillance use cases, whether those are electronic warfare,
- could be microphones, what have you.
- We wanted to create an open system that others could develop the sensors
- they need to accomplish their missions.
- Right. So there must be specifications such
- that not only is it plug
- compatible with what is on the platform, but someone can't send you a
- 50-pound sensor package.
- [laughs] Probably would not work out too well. That's correct.
- So we have documentation, uh, where developers can understand
- what size, weight, power, uh, things like that the vehicle can actually
- carry, as
- well as an understanding or of a software development kit,
- so how they can
- integrate that sensor into the vehicle.
- All right. And the idea of drones interacting
- with one another.
- Yes.
- I hesitate to use the word drone. That's not real popular in the-
- Right
- ... UAV field. Let's, UAVs, let's stick with that one.
- But, uh, under Replicator maybe is the most famous latest example.
- But the idea of them operating
- with,
- interoperating with one another in a coordinated way, the swarming idea.
- Indeed.
- How is that coming into all of this?
- Uh, I'm gonna answer your second question
- first, which was about
- Replicator. So I, I think Replicator is a tacit
- acknowledgment by the leadership of the US Department of Defense that
- drones actually do matter. They are having a real effect on the
- battlefield. And then that next step is how do we get
- more out of that vehicle? And right now, and this gets to your second question,
- which is around multiple drones working together.
- So I think today when most people think of operating
- a, a drone, uh, they think about it in the context of a
- single human being
- delivering their intent to a single aerial robot-
- Mm-hmm
- ... via stick and rudder inputs. And, and that's interesting, but in
- our view at Skydio, there are gonna be orders of
- magnitude more drones on the battlefields of the future, and that idea of
- one-to-one control will never scale.
- So the only way that we will achieve that value is to have a
- single human being be able to communicate their intent to
- multiple drones, and then have each of those drones
- independently
- reason how they can help that human achieve that intent.
- So amidst the drone of all of those rotating
- quadcopter choppers, I'm hearing artificial intelligence
- coming through.
- Absolutely. A- and that is, uh, what we consider our competitive
- advantage at Skydio, is we don't think of our vehicles as
- drones.
- We think of them as intelligent flying machines, uh, that right now, even
- operating as a single machine, can reason around their environment,
- navigate without GPS or without global navigation signals,
- using visual perception of their environment, and also find things
- of interest and track those things without a human having to make a stick or rudder
- input. So to take that forward, we are doing a lot of research
- now, and have demonstrated much success, on having multiple drones work
- together- To accomplish a role. Uh, just a small example
- is, uh, we have perfected what we call an on
- station handoff, where one
- drone could be surveilling a scene and has responsibility for that scene.
- It can now communicate to another drone, "Hey, I'm getting low on battery."
- Got it.
- Now, that other drone will autonomously, without the human being doing
- anything, fly to the same location, match its sensors, take over
- responsibility, communicate to the first drone, "I'm here,
- you're
- relieved." That drone can now go home and get another battery.
- So you can keep them kind of in constant rotation.
- Indeed. And that solves what I think is one of the major limitations of some of
- these small UAS, and that is the endurance problem.
- Sure.
- So now with a few batteries on the ground and this capability of inter
- drone communication, I can essentially take a short endurance
- platform and turn
- it into an almost infinite endurance platform.
- So a virtual infinite platform-
- Correct
- ... if you will. And that idea of the
- vehicle being able to avoid obstacles and reroute itself should something come
- up, a flock of birds or whatever-
- Correct
- ... that seems like a short step then to
- making sure that they can avoid one
- another in formation or a group.
- A- absolutely. And y- you bring up a great point
- when you talk about the
- automation, the, the obstacle avoidance, 'cause one of the key
- detractors of the small UAS right now is that they're
- often difficult to fly. And so if you have a large enterprise,
- say an army
- unit, uh, and you want to operate a large fleet of
- these drones, you have to invest
- a lot of your time and effort into pilot training.
- So if we can abstract those difficulties away from you and
- make this such that just about anyone can fly the drone safely without having to
- worry about hitting obstacles, it really lets soldiers focus on the fight
- and
- not the flight.
- Right. So these are not quite disposable things,
- but they're also not
- exactly
- gigantic, uh, platforms that-
- Correct
- ... that-
- Correct
- ... keep for 30 years.
- Yeah. And so what, what we've seen in, uh, in Ukraine right now with our systems
- is many of the small UAS are considered by the Ukrainian forces
- a one and done platform.
- Mm-hmm.
- They, they send it up, and they know they're never getting it
- back.
- Uh, with m- most of our drones, that is not the case.
- They are getting these drones back because of the automation that we have built
- into them. So, you know, it's easy, I think, at the point of sale to look at
- maybe the cost and go, "Okay. Well, this might cost more
- than that, so I'm gonna buy these." But if you're only using these once, all of a
- sudden the calculus changes significantly.
- Interesting. All right. Well, I think we're good here.
- Mark Valentine is President of Global Government at Skydio. Thank you so much.
- Yeah. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, all.
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8 Mins 43 Secs