 Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for coming in on this dreary rainy day, but now you're going to get a lot of Enlightenment and sunshine from our guest speaker Professor John Jackson When he talks about unmanned systems, but before he gets to that Let me just say it's a privilege to welcome you to this third Installment this third event in our issues in national security lecture series. My name is Tim Schultz I am the Associate Dean of academics here at the Naval War College and I get to work every day with our Speaker Professor John Jackson more on him in a minute, but before then let me just acknowledge a few people who are here Who are part of the team who are important to all of us in this room? I'll start out with the fact I noticed there's a Boy Scout among us. I love to see that welcome young man We also have other people who are interested in community service and from fleet and family services Fleet and Family Support Center is way in the back. She's waiting for you to come talk to her about their many programs and services Thank you and for coming. We have Dean and Teresa right down here with our MWR Organization they are here to help you in numerous ways and also for the first time we have Melissa Fumara from Military One Source and that's a DOD sponsored organization. They provide a lot of different services including Free tax filing support. So talk to Melissa if you have to pay taxes Also, thank you. I know there are a number of members of the Naval War College Foundation here Thank you for coming and we have a number of flag officers here including the president of the Naval War College Admiral Chatfield. Thank you ma'am for coming and Her husband David, thank you David for making the trip as well and a bunch of other animals that I've spotted in the crowd Thank you, sirs and ma'ams for joining us Okay, now briefly to John Jackson He is our Elmer A. Sperry chair of unmanned and robotic systems here at the Naval War College Which is a fantastic title because he does fantastic work Something he's done recently is he was the Naval War College representative to this fantastic conference that was all the way out in Rome It was get this title. It was the Leonardo da Vinci Foundation Conference on the ethics and law of artificial intelligence and who shows up to that from America? John Jackson is the represent is representing the United States at the Leonardo da Vinci Foundation conference on Ethics and the law of artificial intelligence. How do we know he was there? Because I have seen with my own eyes a picture of John Jackson standing next to and shaking the hand of the Prime Minister of Italy and In the Prime Minister of Italy's other hand. What is he holding? He is holding this behold. It is John Jackson's book one nation under drones It found its way all the way to the Prime Minister's hands, maybe they're Translated into Italian already John teaches our unmanned systems and conflict course our elective He teaches it twice a year. It's one of those few electives We offer more than once due to its its quality its timeliness and the tremendous demand among the students who want to take it So we appreciate his expertise that he brings to the naval war college, which he will momentarily bring to you He goes by a number of nicknames. Here are three of my favorites Professor John Jackson is the Caesar of cyborgs the Raj of robots and May I introduce to you the Duke of Drones John Jackson? Enjoy too kind too kind all right. I have somebody else who's going to help me today Can be very 10 10 for mental so I've got to watch this guy. So anyway, this is beat my friend BB8 who you're all familiar with From the movies. I think maybe I better now. I don't know what impact that's going to have It could come looking for me, but anyway this is a serious subject, but we're going to have a little bit of fun with it this afternoon and as Was indicated in the introduction I hold the EA spary chair of unmanned systems EA spary Elmer spary was an inventor back in the early 1900s It's going to keep talking He invented the gyro compass and a lot of other things and whatnot So we've named the unmanned systems after after mr. Spary. So I wanted to emulate the guy So I grew a mustache My wife who's in the back said I looked like a riverboat gambler or a used car salesman So we have shaved that mustache and never to be seen again The subject of robotics and unmanned systems, you know, you can't pick up a magazine newspaper anything else without seeing something About the subject. It's always in the news and so it's something we ought to spend a little bit time a little bit of time understanding better So the question is is this a new idea and as usual in these kind of situations not really this is back in 1918 and this is spary's automatic airplane and This is a model of the airplane that we have down in our future forces gallery Which is down near the library where we have a lot of examples of robotics and other things This was a machine in the 1918 time frame You could barely get an airplane in the air with a human being flying it. So could you do it with a robot? So the idea here is you'd fuel it up. You'd fill it full of explosives You'd point it in the general direction of the target. It would take off It would count the number of times the propeller went around and when it got to a certain number It would cut off the engine and it would dive on the target. Okay, not exactly precision guided munitions But that was the attempt of the day and it was a moderately successful The aerial torpedo and a few other designs were were developed towards the end of first world war Although they were never used in operations So we'll jump ahead to the second world war. I'm not going to spend too much time on every war but this is a item called the the Denny might now if you're a Canineer if you're firing a naval gun you need to practice what you do So the best way to do that is you put a man in an airplane and he tows a target behind the airplane They call it a sleeve and then the canineers the gunners are told to shoot behind the airplane and hit the sleeve Doesn't always work out that way So Reginald Denny who was a movie star that your great grandmother may remember Also was interested in radio controlled aircraft And so he said I bet we could do that mission without putting a man at risk And so he invented the Denny might as a target drone and during the second world war They made as many as seven thousand of these and use them very successfully Well, he had a factory in Van Nuys, California And they sent a photographer over to check out what was going on and the photographer saw this attractive young woman Who was building drones and he said, you know, I bet she could do more than build drones. That's Marilyn Monroe So there's the ultimate bar bet, you know, how did Marilyn Monroe get her start building drones in the second world war? So I have heard a vicious rumor that Lady Gaga is getting in the drone business And if it's that if she's getting in I'm getting out of the drone business. So Anyway, so we're gonna start and talk about basically robots that fly Robots that swim and robots that crawl. So we'll talk about the air domain the maritime domain and the land domain And we'll talk about these from large to small. We'll talk about fixed wing We'll talk about rotary wing, which is what we generally call helicopters And we'll talk about some of the swarming systems that were are being developed. So so this is the global Hawk This is the largest unmanned aircraft we're currently flying It's about the size of a Boeing 737 can fly for 30 hours at a time It in effect could take off from California fly to Maine spend 12 hours Surveying what's going on in Maine and then fly back to California That is a tremendous capability and the global Hawk does that very well for us Navy said, you know, we've got an awful lot of ocean that we need to surveil Could we not have a version of global Hawk? And so we develop what's called Triton, which is the Navy version and you see the aircraft carrier down there That is not to imply it could take off or land from that aircraft carrier far too large to do that But it's a land-based aircraft. So it flies like our P3s now our P8 aircraft maritime patrol aircraft fly Extended distance over oceans determine what the targets are necessary. We'll then call out on call in additional assets to engage those targets So here I am out at Point Magoo, California with the with the Triton And it may not be obvious from this vantage point, but I stand about six foot six. So that gives you night They're laughing at me Admiral. That's not a good sign About six foot six and and I know that's true because at graduation This is me with one of our professors Terri and Lannister who teaches a really good course in dwarfs and dragons But as you can see, I'm clearly six and a half feet tall. So we'll use that as a model as we move forward So here's the Reaper. That's the one that you've heard most about it's a aircraft operated by the Air Force the airplane is in country somewhere whether it's Afghanistan Iraq other locations The pilot that is flying it is in some place like creature Air Force Base outside Las Vegas, Nevada Multiple other locations. So the pilot is not with the aircraft The pilot is back home and this thing can fly for about 24 hours So you can have a pilot that flies for eight hours gets out of the seat a second pilot sits down flies it for eight hours third pile flies it for eight hours, then it lands back in the area of the The action we have a team they call the launch and recovery element that is actually in the area where the airplanes are operating They do the maintenance and they send these planes off again. So it's been a tremendously successful program In all likelihood, and I have no access to great classified data, but aircraft of this sort were probably used in the recent attack on the Iranian general and for many many other targets So it allows us to do the things we need to do it carries bombs gravity bombs and also carries missiles and Can engage those targets when they do without putting anyone at risk This is a creature Air Force Base and they have a hole in the floor They make the Navy guys stand in so the Air Force guys look taller. So That's my story and I'm sticking to it. So so again, that's the the Reaper Which is a larger version of the predator that flew prior to this the US Air Force has enough of these airplanes to have 60 of them in the air 24 hours a day seven days a week absolutely remarkable capability and They are Designing the next generation aircraft, which will have even greater capability So the Navy I said has the Triton which does not launch from an aircraft carrier So what if you wanted to launch an unmanned aircraft from an aircraft carrier? Well, this is the UCS D The military loves acronym. So this is the unmanned combat air systems Demonstrator and this aircraft took off and landed from an aircraft carrier multiple times nobody on board It lands perfectly every time Third wire every time doesn't matter whether it's dark whether it's light whether the weather is bad it can do that job So this is the demonstrator never intended to be an operational aircraft We built two of them flew them successfully and now the next generation of this aircraft is into the design phase Again, that's the the relative size of this aircraft no matter how tall I am and It also would be able to do air-to-air refueling Probably one of the most demanding tasks of any aviator is to be able to bring your aircraft up behind that tanker and receive fuel and the the tanker had people in it the Drone does not and they were very successful at doing that So the Navy based on that experience awarded a contract to Boeing To build what they call the mq-25 alpha stingray, which I like because I drive a Corvette So stingray has a nice ring to me. This is going to be a refueler It is going to go out and so in this case as a reverse There will be manned pilots in the aircraft and unmanned system Refueling that air those aircraft so the aircraft takes off f-35 whatever the case may be flies out the Tanker meets up with it tops it off. It goes and does its mission It comes back the tanker meets up with it again gives it enough fuel to land successfully on the aircraft carrier so we expect to see Boeing fly the first version of this sometime later this year and Then the designs will go on and continue and we'll see them in the in the fleet here in the 2021 22 time frame This is the RQ 170 sentinel. This is a stealthy low observable unmanned aircraft smaller than the UCAS and much smaller than the the others that we've talked about if you all remember the photo of The White House of President Obama and the team around the table while the bin Laden attack was taking place They were watching footage coming in from a RQ 170 This is also the one that the Iranians captured They claim they hacked it and brought it down. We think it was a mechanical communications problem It did in fact land in the desert and the the Iranians or the Iraqis the Iranians did in fact pick it up So this is a follow-on version. This is the RQ 170. We believe the RQ 180 is Operating today, but again, we don't deal in the classified level So it's a little smaller. This is the blackjack So the notion is you can get a predator a reaper a global hawk to fly over wherever you're operating But you have to ask there has to be enough aircraft availability to cover where you're going to be so a lot of the Marine soldiers, etc. Navy like to have an organic capability with them that they control They can launch and they can do the surveillance that they want to do and this is what blackjack is The Marines operate this This again is an indication of the the relative size of the of the blackjack And if you see it, I'm wearing the same blue shirt that I was in the previous picture. That got me in trouble I went to a conference in Las Vegas, which was enough trouble And then I came back with these pictures and the boss said well clearly you went one day took all the pictures They went and play golf so so the moral of that story has changed your shirt between photos This is the arrow environment switch blade again a much smaller Device and the interesting thing about this one is it has a warhead in it So it will fly for about 25 minutes the Operators looking into the control unit there and will fly it into a small into a target whether it's a truck a Vehicle what not not a big warhead, but adequate to do what you need to do I skipped over but this is the this is the Raven I'll stay here. This is the Raven aircraft That's an actual full-size aircraft and this will fly for about six hours at a time and it sends back Coverage of what it sees both at night with infrared and during the daytime So it's strictly surveillance not a weapons carrier, but again the the people on the ground always want to know What's on the other side of the hill? I'd like to know that before I have to go over there and fight so it's Reconnaissance is very very important to the people who are doing this fighting so the switch plate is very popular with the seals and the special forces and There's another version of it called black wing this shoots out of a submarine and this is strictly a surveillance device no weapon in this one, but in effect gives that submarine or a 600-foot tall periscope to see what's going on around his ship in submarine and so the submarine forces adopted this Very very pleased with it. They do not attempt to recover it. It is Less expensive to the point where you do not have to recover it once it's done its mission for you This is a concept for what they call the loyal wingman and the notion here is if you have a manned pilot In a fighter an F-35 or other fighter You could also potentially have three or four unmanned wingman traveling with that individual and that individual will be able to vector These unmanned aircraft in to attack a target do surveillance Whatever the case may be and in most cases they would return back to base and be re rehab for reuse and There's a number of companies developing what they call the a tritable aircraft It's cheap enough so that if you had to use it and it would be a tritable, but not non-reusable reusable This is gremlins, and it's a fascinating concept the notion here is if you had a c-130 or a c-5 aircraft as you can see Up in the upper area there launch these from the aircraft in flight It would go off and do its mission, and then you would recover it in flight the airplane would tow a device behind it kind of like the refueling Basket that we saw earlier and the drone would hook up they'd winch it into the airplane They'd take it back to the base charge it up and use it again Really a remarkable capability gremlins the Device flew for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and they're moving quickly on that that approach And this is just an indicator of swarms. This is one of the biggest concerns that all of us have That you know you have probably seen light shows over the olympics light shows over the Super Bowl Where you have 500 to a thousand drones? simultaneously in the air making colorful designs and whatnot, but what if those were drones with an evil intent and if a Aircraft carrier or other ship is under attack you could probably defend against five targets or ten targets or twenty targets Could you defend against five hundred targets inbound against your ship? So how you can deal with storms is a very very big issue and something a lot of Smart people to spend a lot of time thinking about So now let's talk about rotary wings something Emerald Chatfield knows more than anybody in the room about I suspect This is a design for a rotary wing With a very brave pilot who has what I would call industrial strength shingards on Because I I just don't like the idea of ever having to land on that big ball With all those helicopters are whirling around and whatnot, but this is the MQHC fire scout So this is a Bell 407 helicopter that's been converted into unmanned operation So it flies strictly with no one aboard Launches from ships launches from shore can it do all the missions that a manned aircraft can do no But can it do a lot of them? Yes, and we've had instances where earlier versions of the this aircraft the fire scout have been shot down over Libya and No pilot is lost no pilot is held prisoner So there are applications and applications where you would want to use a capability like this This again is a little bit smaller. This is the older version of fire scout and the famous blue shirt This is the Lockheed K max What this is is the Marines said, you know and the army also said we lose a large number of the people that are killed to Improvised explosive devices IEDs that are planted along the roadside So when we send a convoy of trucks out we send three trucks for all stuff We send a couple trucks worth of people supporting that stuff If an IED is encountered, you know people are going to get hurt So the notion is what if you didn't have to put those trucks on the road at all What if you could fly that material directly to the forward operating base and that's what K max will do for us And it was a test program that went over To Afghanistan the Marines were an operator for a six month test program They kept it for two and a half years flew over two million cubic feet two million pounds of cargo And didn't need to be anybody on the ground other than someone with a laser pointer saying drop the material here Everything else was controlled from another location. So both army and Marines are now looking at you know What in the future force would be most appropriate for the use of? Something like the K max which was proven to be very successful as we shrink down in size this is The instant I quad rotor and this is a program the Marines informally called quads for squads and Every marine group is going to have their own drones That they will take out of their backpack and throw into the air and give them that kind of observation that surveillance capability that they need so these are being widely Widely dispersed at this point and in fact the Marines have been Very quick to adapt an awful lot of these unmanned systems and are there any Marines in the audience Who ah, okay tell us when you get a chance tell us more about what they're doing in that area So we're talking about shrinking down in size. This is probably the smallest You're gonna see this is called the black hornet and that is a surveillance drone The troops wear two of them in a box on their chest They open the box they take it out They throw it in the air and it flies for about 20 minutes and sends back video of what it sees Then it comes back and you recharge it and you use it again So you want to know what's inside the behind the walls of that compound? You can fly your black hornet in there and various other locations So it's the smallest really functional military robot that's currently in use So we'll talk a little bit about civilian while we're in the rotary wing business. This is a unmanned air vehicle taxi This is from a Chinese company called Ehang and the notion here is you go up to this thing and you get in and It's got an iPad and you say take me to fall River It takes off and flies you to fall River No pilot no parachute just one terrified passenger So there's a lot of work a lot of effort a lot of research going into these systems and Uber and Lyft and others say the real future is not in Uber cars But in Uber air that you can call these things into the top of a building and it'll take you wherever you want to go This is another version. This is called the volocopter And that's that's me in the cockpit at the Singapore air show and again the idea here is this is a total electric vehicle And it will fly wherever you want it to go pick up the passenger and go to the desired location It's going to be tested in Abu Dhabi and some other Arab countries in the in the near future and Holds a great promise Shrink down even smaller. Here's your quad rotors your classic toys This case is one that crashed on the White House lawn Some Individual had a little too much Cheer on New Year's and said I wonder if I could fly that drone I got for Christmas over to the White House and they did and it crashed cut a lot of people excited because they are very difficult to Detect and very difficult to engage and so there's a lot of systems that have been developed to do that mission This is one called drone killer and the notion here is that it's an electronic device that will jam the signal and Force the drone down or force it to turn around the problem with the electronic versions Is it also tends to jam your television stations your communications channels everything else? So there are other ways potentially to deal with these drones Okay, now if you'll stand by for the best picture of the show you ready Valerie. She's seen this before There it is I call my John Wayne picture this is the sky wall and We took it out on the lawn at the Naval War College. We flew some quad rotor drones This device shoots out a projectile using compressed air It goes near the target. It splits open and puts out a net and It captures the drone and brings the drone down with a parachute Doesn't hit anybody in the head gets gives you the opportunity to go find the drone Maybe determine where it came from and so it's a very interesting kinetic approach to stopping these things We had some issues with our security folks and we said we're gonna go shoot down some drones But they they ultimately let us do it and that was I was our Christmas card what two years ago Yeah Valley says you cannot send that to everybody. I said all right. I'll send my own This is interesting they are actually training Hawks to intercept drones and They've done that successfully the ASPCA said hey, I don't like to sound you know the the worrying propellers They're gonna hurt the claws of the birds, so they develop little bitty Kevlar gloves For the birds to wear and whatnot so they've tried it it works, but there's a lot of a lot of issues with using a Living system like that Okay, let's switch away from these stuff that flies and let's talk about maritime systems Since this is the naval war college So this is just a few examples of some of the various designs the big yellow one in the top That's also down in the future forces gallery near the library if you want to take a closer look at that at some point But one of the more successful programs right now is this one, which was called seahunter This is a hundred and thirty one foot long ship surface ship Recently went from San Diego to Hawaii and back with no one aboard It understands rules of the road etc. And it is the forerunner They're building a second one of the sea hunters now, and they're doing design work There's as much as four hundred million dollars in the budget this coming year to design What would be larger unmanned surface ships and what are they going to do? Well, it's yet to be determined. We talked to the The Commodore of the surface development group in Coronado yesterday, and they're looking at a lot of options Perhaps it's an unmanned arsenal ship Which means you put hundreds if not thousands of missiles on this ship And there's no one aboard and the command and control is done by the surface ship Or the air asset that you have available so it tremendously expands the the ability of you to carry weapons It also could do surveillance work. You could send them out just to do surveillance ahead of the battle group So in the next 18 to 24 months, we're gonna see more development on how exactly we're going to use these unmanned surface vehicles Chief naval operations recently said, you know, this is one of the keys to the future We need to stop running away from these things and start embracing these things But again, they can't do everything that a man platform can do but we need to find out what they can do in The unmanned undersea vehicle realm This is an eye chart for you that just indicates is everything from extra-large to large to medium to small unmanned undersea vehicles that are being used and This is a picture of a whole group of these These are wave gliders They can stay at sea for six months at a time They actually harvest electricity from solar panels and from the movement of the waves as the vehicle goes through the water And so it can go for months at a time thousands of miles very slow But gives you all kinds of readings about the water temperature depth salinity all the kind of things you particularly care about if you're looking for For enemy submarines so small enough in some cases they're launched from ships and even some of them are launched by hand one of the more fascinating programs that We've followed very closely is this one. It's called the echo voyager or the orca program and This is me and a group of folks at the rollout of the the unmanned submarine And this is again to give you an idea the size of this thing It's eight. It's 80 feet long. It dives to 11,000 feet depth of water not 1100 But 11,000 feet depth of water. It's diesel electric So it runs on battery for about 48 hours comes near the surface puts up a snorkel runs its diesel generator Recharges its battery and gets additional update on its orders if necessary and then goes back out to do what it's going to do So what's it going to do? It could theoretically launch missiles. It could launch UAVs It could drop mines could even swim seals from the device not from 11,000 feet depth of water Admiral Howe was here. I'd make sure he understood. I'm not a proposal They go to that deep with it, but Boeing spent a hundred million dollars of their own money to build this system and said if we build it They will come and in fact the Navy has come and has ordered five of these and we're going to see what they are designed best to do and again, let our Multi-billion-dollar manned submarines do what they're best at and let this if your main interest is to set off a harbor Somewhere and keep track of who's coming and going from that harbor. This is a really good way to do it And does not bore your crew to death either. So Orca you'll be seeing a lot more about in the near future So that's some of the maritime systems a lot of other ones, but we'll move on to ground-based systems this is a high-speed tank developed by a company called how and how and It is able to go up incredible Angles and do extreme high speed through mud and everything else Very impressive. This is the pack but that's a picture of it. And this is it right here. So this is an actual Explosive Ordnance disposal robot and in theory this all folds up and you can pack it on your back and carry it into where you need to go The smaller one here is called dragon runner over there Dragon runner is one that again is designed for the troops to carry it on their back And this particular the dragon runner does not have a manipulator arm But another soldier or marine could be carrying that manipulator arm They put the two of them together and they go off and do whatever mission they're assigned to do but we have the military has saved thousands of lives because in the old days if you saw something a pile of trash you thought might be an explosive device You put on the big bomb suit. You went down there. You tried to investigate it Hopefully it did not detonate in this case. You send the robot down. It will give you an indication of what it is It'll lay an explosive charge back off and then you can detonate the explosive charge from a safe distance So very very popular systems again the troops troops love them this is kinetic Mars the modular advanced armed robotic system and That's Admiral Christensen one of the past presidents here at the college good friend of the the chat fields When we told security we were bringing a robot with a machine gun on board I had another another few hoops to go through but this device has a machine gun It has a tear gas dispenser laser dazzler has a communications speaker and microphone So it can roll into an area and say clear this area or we're going to engage the target It has been used operationally They're being used at the Korean DMZ At this point and whatnot and so kinetic that's how they spell kinetic in in Massachusetts apparently Is is a company that is developing this and a number of other systems? So again, they're very interested in what can we use robots to do to aid the men and women in uniform? this is one called mutt the Multi-utility tactical transport now to me that guy's putting a gun on it because he doesn't trust it but I don't know if that's true or not, but what people don't realize is that a Soldier going into combat has more weight on his or her back Than a knight in shining armor used to have when they were wearing their suit of armor It's an incredible load and so they will theoretically fly great distances Get thrown out of the airplane the helicopter whichever the case may be and hump all this stuff Wherever they're going to go and need to fight very very difficult So what if you had a robot that you carry a lot of that material carry your supplies carry your additional? Batteries and whatnot maybe carry a weapon like this one shows Wouldn't that be a great a great aid to what we're trying to do so a number of Vehicles everything from wheel to track and that little bitty small one there is designed you throw it through a window and Then the people outside can see what's going on inside the building and what they find is when soon as you throw it through The window everybody in the building runs out because they think it's going to blow up And of course the seal said can you make it blow up and I said well You know it's designed so you can throw it off a third floor roof and it'll keep going I'm not sure we can throw it off a third floor roof with an explosive on it So you can have it either way, but you can't have it both ways So again a lot of research being done on what we're going to do in the the ground environment Company Boston Dynamics you may have seen some of their robots So if you Google Boston Dynamics and look at what some of their robots have done They've got one in particular It's called Atlas and there's the greatest video of this robot who comes out picks up that box The guy with the hockey stick knocks it out of his hand Robot goes okay Ben's over picks it up again guy knocks it out of his hands again And you can see the robot looking at him like when we take over You're the first to go So take a look at those those videos. They're very humorous, but you know part of the problem is you know We've seen so many movies TV shows our whole life We think making robots walk around and do stuff is easy. Well, it is not it's very difficult To get this thing to walk on two feet and do what needs to be done So Boston Dynamics and a number of other companies are doing some great work in this area The Navy is looking at a robotic firefighter. It says why do we have to have a sailor go into that? Compartment with smoke and fire or whatnot if we could send a robot in to do that mission and carry that heavy hose In there and put out the fire so a lot going on in that area This is a shot from my class one one trimester Mike Sherlock on a teacher's course And we invite the companies to come in and display their systems So the students actually get a chance to play with these things So we go into that little patio that's near the the library and do our version of battle bots and Roll these things around the one. I'm leaning my foot on is a round robot called guard bot And it actually rolls where it wants to go the cameras are on either side of it stabilized And you can see what it wants to do the smaller one down front I've got a model of that my office can roll under a car and check for explosives and whatnot under the car so very very useful and The companies will come we'll start again Teaching in March and we'll put out a note to all of the students if they want to come by and see these We do ground a airtime maritime day ground a air day maritime day Legal and ethics day where we talk about the legality and ethical issues related to these robots And that's always a very good session. So that'll be coming up again here soon So let's talk a little bit about civilian use. We've talked mostly military so far driverless cars now the picture of the Couple in the back seat of that yellow convertible. That's not what we have in mind Driverless cars, but perhaps they're gonna look more like the little white one or they're gonna look like the Tesla that you see there and Tesla, you know has a Driverless mode, but they say don't trust it. You have to stay behind the wheel You have to keep your hands on the steering wheel in case something goes wrong You can grab on to it and regain control. There have been some accidents there have been some people killed in in Tesla's in one case the a Truck pulled in front of the Tesla. The truck was white. The sky was white The sensor couldn't tell the difference and drove right into the truck They found that the driver was watching a Harry Potter video at the time It was still playing when they when they got to the scene of the accident So, you know, they driverless cars are coming They will be at some point to the point where in theory you could get in it and say take me to Chicago and climb in the back seat They're not there today, but there's a lot of work being done by Tesla and other manufacturers to make these driverless cars a possibility This is an interesting System this is called zipline and what this is is a medical delivery system and it's being operated in Rwanda and Uganda and The infrastructure in those countries is is not the best Rainy seas and the roads become almost impassable. So the notion here is what if you needed blood samples you needed medicine, whatever There's a central hub that flies the zipline drone and it gets over the target It throws it out by parachute and it's recovered by the people at the location they have made tens of thousands of deliveries very very successfully and They claim that within 15 minutes from the time I get in the order They'll have their drone in the air and it can get to wherever it's going It's fast enough to get about an hour hour and a half to where it's going and then make its return trip So very successful a lot of other companies are also looking in this area This is another medical application. They're flying Defibrillator machines that you can call down and hook someone up who's having a cardiac Situation and hopefully bring them back to life. There are versions of this which carry a float To swimmers who are drowning in the surf It's hard to get out there to that person with a jet ski or a rowboat or whatever you're trying to do You can take the drone out there and the drone yells Hey, here it comes throws the float down and the individual is able to to to be saved. So This is a precision agriculture There are be these are being used today. They're being used a lot in Japan the FAA still has some issues with using these extensively in the United States But the idea here is you fly over your crops and you look at them and you determine where this is infested with Disease this has got not enough water needs to be water other issues and whatnot So in one day you can get a complete readout on everything. It's going on in your field and address that and increase the productivity and Everyone knows that there's going to be a tremendous need to increase the productivity of our farms in the coming future And drones is a potential way to do some of that this is The notion of could we deliver packages directly to your door? This is alphabet, which is the parent company of Google Is doing this experimental work and they have delivered burritos. They've delivered pizzas They delivered medicine and whatnot and what happens here is there's propellers on the top of those Structures going back that gives you the vertical lift and the ability to hover and then when it wants to fly forward It uses its forward propellers to do that and it drops that thing down and you come pick it up And you've got whatever you're looking for They've even come up with the notion of could we have a flying warehouse And in this case, it's okay. I'm at the Super Bowl and I want a 49ers t-shirt Maybe a bad choice, but you know on a chief's t-shirt, you know in theory You could go out in a parking lot order one and this thing would bring it directly to you I'm not sure we want that. I'm not sure I want hundreds or thousands of drones buzzing around my neighborhood There's all kinds of issues about how do you do airspace deconfliction control? I suspect the Admiral may have flown near some drones. She wish weren't there on occasion But there's a lot of discussion with the FAA and whatnot and maybe we have a drone zone from 200 to 400 feet And we know that's primarily where the drones are going to operate, but we'll see what happens Frankly, do we need our burrito in 30 minutes or could we wait a little bit longer? I don't know but the capability is there and it's being experimented with and even closer to home Wally, okay. Have you all met Wally at the stop and shop? A number of grocery stores have Wally Wally ones around primary. He's looking for spills He's looking for shells that need to be restocked. I think maybe he's looking for shop lifters I don't know but but they don't say for sure, but Wally is an interesting character So whenever we go shopping, I follow Wally around for an extended period I'm easy to amuse So we've seen robots that fly swim and crawl To learn more. I do have a book. I'm not selling my book, but if you're interested, there's some information about my book this happens to be the Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore and Those are my pasty white feet that I Knew when you came here today, you did not anticipate seeing that and wish you hadn't so so that's basically what I've got to say we've got you know 15 minutes or so for questions and David are you gonna be able to do a microphone Ah good. Oh Yeah, let me I was gonna Tell you at the closing, but I'll tell you now Since David said tell me now. I'm gonna tell you now We had a group of a dozen view Folks go on a tour of Newport today, and I think it went very well We hope to do those before each lecture. There are sign-up sheets. We can take about 13 people in the Say again No more than 13 because you gotta have a driver and somebody who's gonna give you the the history of Newport So if you're interested there sign-up sheets both for next week The week or two weeks from now and the the events following that so this is something that mr. Scoville has as arranged and I think we're trying to make these events kind of multi-purpose So not only do you get a lecture you get to talk to the experts who can support you in what you need to do and You can also maybe get it to our Newport. So all right questions Yes, sir Yeah, the question is you know, could there not be a major jammer that jams the signals and knocks all these things out and the answer is yes It is a problem. You can encrypt your data lines in a lot of cases. That's that's expensive and difficult to do We've not done it to date because in the Persian Gulf and other locations We've pretty much owned the territory and we haven't had to worry about that We all recognize it going forward if you're flying this Drone from Creech Air Force Base the signal goes from Creech through undersea cables to the area of interest to the satellite and then back down to the To the aircraft So if you cut that signal at any point during that process you're gonna have problems with with operating your system So that drives you to a more autonomous system that can do what it needs to do without having mid-course guidance If you will so very good question the whole management of the Electromagnetic spectrum is is something the the smart people are looking at and trying to come up with a plan So thank you other questions sir Yeah, this is a question. There was a Ted talk that Talked about drones in reality There's a fake Ted talk that talks about killbots and it basically says well What if I had that one like that little one I showed you and what if it had the facial recognition to the point where it goes Jimmy? we're coming to get you and Jimmy's face, you know that would work for us. So So, you know in this fictional Ted talk They said okay, what if we went around and we could selectively kill the people that we wanted to kill It doesn't exist today. There's a lot of rules and regulations that would preclude it from happening We the good guys are not gonna do that. Does that mean that our enemies would not not so sure about that? So they you know, there's nothing technologically hard to understand about the ability to do that and And so it's something again We need to watch and as the whole robotics world evolves these issues keep coming up and the Smart engineers are gonna have to figure out how to deal with it. Thank you other questions Way in the back sir Absolutely, you know the whole issue of the acquisition process and how long it takes to go from concept to design to construction to Implementation operational use and whatnot is is far too long and there's a lot of reasons why it is the way it is But there is a great push particularly in the Air Force going on will roper who used to be the head of the strategic Capabilities office that spent a lot of money to make find ways to do this quicker faster better Is now in the Air Force and they are looking at you know How can we go in a six to twelve month period from concept actual design and implementation? 3d printing which you mentioned is a great way to do it the Marines the Marines have 3d printers with a lot of their units now and The young young Marines are the ones that are particularly good with it Then you know I don't need to carry this part in a parts bin if I could manufacture it on demand And they are able to do that So there are 3d printers on ships now and a lot of things that are being done But we fully recognize that we have to get on board the defense Innovation unit the DIU Spends a lot of money in Silicon Valley and other places a lot of time and a lot of money to reach out to these people And a lot of times it's smaller companies It's those small companies that are are quick to react and come up with the designs a lot of times The big companies by the small companies So the issue is can you allow them to continue to do that quick design and effort that they need to do and Still be maybe within a larger environment and whatnot, but yeah, and you know the enemy you know the enemy the Al-Qaeda and others have used these systems They'll get a commercial drone that you can buy for $500 and they'll put a grenade under it and Take it over and fly it and drop it on a on a group of troops and the US army and others That's one of their primary concerns is how do you protect it because there was a time when you had to be a nation to Have an air force nowadays you do not and if you talk about something as you know like chemical or biological weapons, you know It's been said that you could shut down the New York Harbor in One day for about $5,000 now. That's a scary thought and you know, how do you prevent that from happening? So that's the good news for the day. So anybody got any happy questions Anyone else any of our younger guys got anything they'd like to ask Yes, sir Yeah, yeah tanks are one of the issues that they are incredibly big and heavy and whatnot and the notion is could they you know Benefit more from maneuverability than over arming whatnot. There are a lot of efforts underway to build human skeletons exoskeletons that people would wear and if you remember the The alien movies where she would wear this device and lift up these tremendous weights there are designs going on now where an air force Armourer who could reload an aircraft pick up a 250 pound bomb Walk over put it under the airplane take it back and whatnot So there's a lot of things that are being done to enhance the ability of human being to do what they need to do Good question. Thank you Any other questions or comments sir? Yeah, the whole issue of artificial intelligence as Tim mentioned that conference we did in in Rome was all about the legal and ethical issues of artificial intelligence and the issue is these systems that are being developed to machine learning and they can change their Programming themselves while they're moving ahead So you're never exactly sure what this robot theoretically is going to do at any given point in time You know, how do you build safeguards into that? You know Isaac Asimov the famous three rules of robotics, which are fictional But basically says a robot cannot harm a human being and a robot cannot it will protect itself unless it would cause harm to a human being and So can you build that kind of ethical governor into a robot? There's a lot of work. It's been done by that Ron Arkin and others down the University of In Atlanta have done a lot of work on that notion And there's some thought that says a robot could actually be more humane than a human being a Robot does not get mad a robot does not get upset because somebody in his Squad was killed a robot executes what it was told to do. I'm not sure we are going to build any robots that You know have that severe a Self-preservation mode built into them I think there will always be human control and a Kill switch that allows you to disable that thing Otherwise we get in the terminator scenario that we've all seen and that we don't want our Arnold Schwarzenegger Crawling around doing that kind of stuff. So thank you as soon, you know, we're doing very well We were we were certainly on the cutting edge There's a lot of good work being done by a lot of other people the Israelis are particularly good The Chinese and the Russians are doing an awful lot on this The Chinese have said they will be the leaders and artificial intelligence within 10 years And they are putting tremendous amounts of money and emphasis on that subject You know the DOD just recently formed the joint artificial intelligence Center General Shanahan was here a few weeks ago talking about what we're trying to do But you know artificial intelligence is a scale It's everything from you get an elevator and you push the button, you know, that's kind of there's a brain in there That says oh, I understand he wants me to go to the third floor you go to the third floor Self-driving cars is a form of artificial intelligence. Will we ever get to the point where? robots becomes Smartest human beings to the recognize that they have a personality and seek to protect themselves a lot of people say No, they say if it is going to happen. It's 2050 years downrange and whatnot so we need to be alert to what's going on We have to track what's going on with artificial intelligence and we need to make sure that you know the good guys are keeping track of it and At the conference in Rome there was discussion of maybe we need somebody like you know the international air traffic control Organization sets the rules and regulations for air travel all around the world And so English is the language that everybody uses the rules and regulations for how you're going to fly those airplanes and what you're Going to do for maintenance are all laid out and if you're going to be Flying in the international world you're going to need to follow those rules Could there be an organization that was kind of the overall control for artificial intelligence and says here's the rules And we expect you to follow them Bad guys choose not to follow them Then you're going to have to have some kind of a process in place to to find out about it and take appropriate action But it's a it's one of the one of the hottest topics is is AI and what does it what does it mean for the future? Any other questions? Okay, well, it's been a great pleasure to be with you today I will be down here and if anybody wants to come down get pictures with the robots or ask any questions and please See MWR fleet and family support and military one source if you have any questions The next one of these will be on the 25th, and it'll be Dr. Craig Simons Who's one of the finest historians anywhere in the world will be given a presentation called Lincoln and his admirals? A lot of people don't know exactly what the Navy did during the Civil War Well, Dr. Simons is going to tell you about that so hope to see you back here on the 25th. Thank you very much