 The U.S. Naval War College is a Navy's home of thought. Established in 1884, NWC has become the center of Naval seapower, both strategically and intellectually. The following issues in national security lecture is specifically designed to offer scholarly lectures to all participants. We hope you enjoy this upcoming discussion and future lectures. Good afternoon and welcome to our 13th issues in national security lecture for academic year 2021 or 2021-22. I'm Commander Gary Ross and I'll serve as your host for today's event. Professor John Jackson, who normally is your excellent moderator, will be presenting his lecture on drones and robots. I'm looking forward to hosting you today. Redmond Shoshana-Chapfield is on travel this week and won't be joining us, so we wish her a safe return. For anyone just joining us, I want to reiterate that this series was originally conceived as a way to share a portion of the Naval War College's academic experience with the spouses and significant others of our student body. Over the past four years, it has been restructured to include participation by the entire Naval War College extended family, to include members of the Naval War College Foundation, international sponsors, civilian employees, and colleagues throughout the Naval Station Newport. We will be offering two additional lectures between now and May, 22, for a total of 15, spaced about two weeks apart on a wide variety of national security topics and issues. An announcement detailing the dates, topics, and speakers of each lecture will be sent by me, both on email and posted on our website. Our next lecture will be on Tuesday, 3 May. We will feature an engaging discussion on humanitarian assistance with Professor Hank Brightman. The reason for this four-week interlude is that NWC will have spring break in two weeks. Each lecture event consists of three parts, the scholarly speaker's presentation, a question and answer period, and then on occasion a family discussion group session. This final segment is of primary interest to family members residing here in Newport and it will feature guest speakers from various support activities and organizations here locally or on base. Okay, on with the main event. Please feel free to ask questions using that chat feature of Zoom and we will address them at the conclusion of the presentation. I am very pleased to introduce our speaker, Professor John Jackson. Professor Jackson will discuss the past, present, and future uses of robotics and unmanned systems, both in the military service and in private use. His fast-paced, fact-filled presentation will discuss the systems involved, the operational challenges they address, and the legal and ethical ramifications of their use, known by many as the Duke of Drones. He will draw from his recent book, One Nation Under Drones, to address everything you always wanted to know about drones, but we're afraid to ask. Professor Jackson is a professor in the Naval War College of Distance Education. He teaches in the area of National Security Affairs and also serves as program manager for the Chief of Naval Operations' professional reading program. A long-time proponent of emergent technology, he has co-moderated one of the college's most popular elective courses entitled Unmanned Systems and Conflict in the 21st Century since the 2009 academic year. In March 2010, he was called to testify before the U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on National Security regarding this course and the attitude of military officers towards evolving technology. In October 2017, he was appointed as the EA Spirit Chair of Robotics and Unmanned Systems. He retired from active duty service in the Navy at the rank of captain after 27 years of service in the logistics and graduate education fields. He has been listed in Marquis' Who's Who in America since 1997. In December 2018, his book One Nation Under Drones was published by the U.S. Naval Institute. One reviewer called it, quote, a unique and seminal work of extraordinary merit, unquote. He has lectured on unmanned systems at venues ranging from the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, the American University Washington College of Law, and the New York Yacht Club. I am pleased to pass the microphone over to Professor Jackson. Well, thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. And my mother would have appreciated that introduction. So thank you, Gary. It's interesting that we've been given this lecture for a number of years, teaching the elective course. Every time we go through it, things have changed. And what we'll try and do is update it a little bit, talk about what's going on in Ukraine with drones and try and give you a broad idea of how these systems are being used. You can't pick up a magazine or newspaper or anything else without seeing something about drones. Everybody has an opinion. There's lots of issues related to their use. Are they legal? Are they moral? Are they effective and whatnot? So we're not going to get into every bit of that discussion today, but we'll touch on some of it. Now, we ask, is this a new idea? And as with most things, it generally is not. This is a spary automatic airplane from the 1918 timeframe. This was an attempt to fly an unmanned aircraft. They would take it full of explosives, point it in the general direction of the target. It would take off. It would fly and count the number of times the propeller went around. And when it got to a preset limit, the motor would cut off and it would dive on the target. Not exactly precision guided munitions, but it was effective. And even though the war was over, they found that this was a good potential use of these systems. They quickly adapted to radio control, which gave them a degree of control that they previously did not have. This is a model of the spary aircraft. And again, in those days, just getting that aircraft into the air and getting it to fly, pretty amazing. The ability to do it without a pilot on board is quite significant. So we're going to jump ahead to World War II timeframe. And there was an actor named Reginald Denning, which our grandparents may remember. He was also a fan of a radio controlled aircraft. And he said, you know, these really should be able to be used for something more than toys. If you're a gunner on a ship or a canineer ashore, you need to practice what you do. So the way to practice was to tow a target behind an airplane and you would shoot at the target behind the airplane. At least that's the theory. Don't shoot at the airplane. They said, why can't we use something like this as a target and either tow a target or use it as the destructive target itself. And so over 7,000 of these dynamites were built and used during the Second World War. So they were built out in California. And this is a photo of a young woman who was building drones. They sent photographers out, take a picture and said, you know, she's pretty attractive. I bet she could do something more than build drones. It's Marilyn Monroe. So this is the ultimate bar bet. If somebody says, how did Marilyn Monroe get her start the bottom line as she was building drones? So there's a nasty rumor that Lady Gaga is getting in the drone business. And if that's true, I'm getting out of the drone business. So let's move ahead. We're going to kind of look at aerial systems, maritime systems, ground systems, and we'll move pretty quickly, but it'll give you a taste of each of these different types of systems. This is the global hop. This is a long range surveillance aircraft. It basically can take off from California, fly to Maine, over fly Maine for eight to 10 hours and then fly back to California, you know, up to 30 hours in the air at a time. And they are very, very successful in what they do, but it's a ground surveillance system. And so the Navy thought they needed one. So we'll show you the maritime version as well. This is the Triton. And the game is a little different whether you're flying over open ocean, they fly considerably lower than the global hop. There's an aircraft carrier on the screen there. They do not take off or land on aircraft carrier far too large to do that. But the Triton is an operation now. It flies in conjunction with the P-8 Maritime Patrol aircraft. And so the P-8 can go out to eight to 10 hours at a time. The Triton can go out to 30 to 40 hours at a time. And so the Triton will go on station. If they see a target of interest, then they can vector the manned aircraft in. And the P-8 does have an ability to attack if necessary. So it's a man to unmanned teaming situation, which is really the way the future is going to be done. This is out at Point Magoo. This is a Triton aircraft. And that's me. To give you an idea, I'm six foot two. And nobody in the audience is buying that for some reason. So I want to prove to you this is me and one of my co-moderators here at the War College. And as you can see, I'm a six foot two. So as we go through these slides, I'll kind of be the measure of each of them as we go through it. So here's Reaper. This is one of the systems that most people are familiar with. Unmanned. It has the ability to do reconnaissance, surveillance, and also attack. When the systems were first developed, they were strictly reconnaissance. And the story goes that it was flying over in Afghanistan, saw a group of people standing around a very tall, turban-wearing individual. And they decided it was probably Osama bin Laden. By the time they were able to vector a weapons platform over there, they'd broken up and they'd left. So it was the CIA initially that says, could we fire a weapon from this aircraft? Or would the mirror firing of the weapon rip the wings off of it? So they did some experiments and discovered that, yes, indeed, hellfire missiles can be launched from these aircraft. Gravity bombs can be dropped. And so they've become a very, very efficient target in attacking that particular group of folks. This is out of Creach Air Force Base. That's a Reaper in the air. They have a hole in the ground. They make the Navy guys stand in so the Air Force guys look tall or anything. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Lot of talk about Ukraine. And so this is a couple of photos of a Turkish unmanned system. It's similar in many ways to the Reaper. Cheaper, quite as good, but it does the job and has been used with great effect in Ukraine. I'll show you a couple other American-made drones that are also being used. But if the enemy controls the skies, you don't have the fighters, the bombers you need and whatnot. If you have an ability to use unmanned aircraft, it helps to balance that equation a bit. And we've all seen the footage of the hundreds of armored vehicles and whatnot, which have been destroyed by the Ukrainians using shoulder launch weapons and also using drones. The Navy again is interested in flying unmanned aircraft from aircraft carriers. The Triton is far too large. This is the unmanned combat air system demonstrator. This was the unmanned aircraft that was able to take off and land on an aircraft carrier. One of the most demanding missions that any pilot has to fly. And this is an indicator of the size of the U-cast. And the system was also able to do air-to-air refueling. So this was, in this case, the large tanker was passing gas to the unmanned aircraft. The Navy has said, well, maybe we could do this in reverse. And why don't we have an unmanned tanker version that will allow us to refuel manned aircraft. And so that's where the latest version is going. That's the carrier-based air-to-air refueler, the MQ-25 Alpha, the Stingray. And it is designed as an air-to-air refueler. And Boeing has the contract. They're under construction right now. Boeing built a demonstrator aircraft using their own funds. And so we're actually flying a version of this today, doing all kinds of technology studies and whatnot, risk reduction. And we hope to see these active on carriers within the next 48 months. And it'll give us the ability to launch the F-35s or other aircraft, go out near the target rendezvous with the air-to-air refueler, tank up, go in and do the mission, come back out, get refueled and come back to the ship. Also allows you to have aircraft in the air when the rest of the air wing is grounded at night and at other times. And the belief is that this aircraft would ultimately be able to be used for reconnaissance and potentially attack. But initially it's designed as an air refueler. But it's the way to get unmanned aircraft on the flight deck of a carrier in close order. This is the RQ-170 Sentinel. This is a low-observable unmanned aircraft. And many of you may have seen the footage of the command authority in Washington while the Bin Laden raid is going on, watching something on the screens. It's been admitted that there were sentinels in the air taking pictures of what was going on during that period. So it's smaller than the U.K.S. it does not fly from carriers but it's a stealthy platform that gives us all kinds of capabilities. It was originally called the Beast of Kandahar when it was seen flying out of Afghanistan and whatnot. A lot of discussion about what's out there now. We talk at the unclass level at all times and whatnot. But the belief is that there is a follow-on to the sentinel out there in flight. Going downrange to a bit smaller and whatnot. This is the Marines Blackjack. This is a version of the integrator, which is a commercial version. And again, that's an indicator of the size of the airframe. You'll note I'm wearing a blue shirt. I took these pictures. I was in a conference for a week. Came back and my boss says, you're wearing the same shirt in every picture. So it looks to me like maybe you went to the conference for one day, took all the pictures, and then went to play golf. So the moral of the story is change your shirt before you take all your pictures and explain to the boss what's going on. So going down to a smaller version, this is the AeroVironment Switchblade. And as you can see on the one side, that's about a 19-inch long airframe. It has a warhead. This is one UAV. You do not want to come back because it has a warhead in it. It's about a grenade-sized warhead, so it's anti-personnel and light vehicle. And you can see on the side there, the operator is launching it from a compressed gas canister and then is looking in the control system and the switchblade will fly for about 15 or 20 minutes. It's a loitering munition. It decides which target is most appropriate and then the operator will drive it in on that target. There is a big brother to it called the Switchblade 600, which is 51 inches long, as opposed to the 19-inch version. And it launches from a tube, as you can see here. This is an indicator again of the size. And this has an armor-person, armor-piercing warhead, a javelin warhead in this device. And you may have seen in the press, it's been talked about, over 100 of these systems have been shipped to Ukraine and they're building up to send more. So there's a number of units of the Ukrainian army that go out at night. The Russian tanks are sitting somewhere, but they're still radiating heat and they're able to drive right down on top of them and destroy the target. So very, very effective and efficient. And it's a smart system and so the operator just needs to basically put the crosshairs on the target and the system will do the rest. This is the Switchblade again, a little more explanation of the capabilities of the system. So the special operating forces, seals, rangers, etc., really like these systems. It's kind of a backpackable cruise missile, if you will. And so they're able to carry with them at all times these systems. You know, the predator, the reaper armed, the gray eagle flies for army. But if you're an operating force, you have to ask permission, you have to get that aircraft to come fly. It's got to be de-conflicted with other missions and whatnot. So the operator is really like the notion of something that's organic to their unit. They can take it with it. They can command it. It's there when they need it and whatnot. So the capability of these organic systems is very good and the troops really like them. There's a version of the Switchblade known as Blackwing and this is used by the submarine force and it's similar in size to the 19-inch Switchblade, sorry. And what it does is launch out of a flare tube from the submarine while the submarine is launched, breaks the surface, flies up about a thousand feet and basically gives the submarine a thousand foot tall periscope. The submarine has to be a periscope depth to get the data coming back but still it gives you that ability to understand the situational awareness of what you're seeing around you. There's no attempt made to recover the Blackwing, although in tests they do recover it with a net when they're doing tests, but operational concerns. The price point is such that they don't need to try and recover it but again the submarine force really likes it. They fully integrate it into their weapons control system so that they've got this capability with them everywhere they go. This is a loyal wingman. This is a concept that says why don't we have a treatable aircraft and that's something that is cheap enough that you can use it and you can lose it if necessary. Not disposable but it could be a treatable or a treatable. And the notion here is that you're going to have manned aircraft perhaps of four or five loyal wingmen flying with them as additional carriers for ordinance or doing surveillance, jamming, whatever the case may be. And so this is just an artist's conception. Kratos and a number of other manufacturers are building these now and we think this is what you'll see coming in the future with again manned unmanned teaming. So are pilots going out of business? No they are not but the pilot may have some other tools they may use and the pilot may not be in the vehicle itself. A pilot may be operating from somewhere else. This is DARPA's long shot which is the notion that what if you had a unmanned aerial vehicle that could carry other unmanned aerial vehicle or weapons so that you would launch this perhaps even from a cargo carrying aircraft launch it. It gets into the area you want to operate and it launches the weapons from there. So again ways to expand the capability of the forces that we currently have. This is Gremlins interesting design and the notion here is that C-130 or C-5, C-17 whatever cargo carrier would have a number of these Gremlins. They would drop them out of the back of the airplane. The Gremlin would go do its mission whether it's surveillance or ISR jamming whatever the case is would then return to the aircraft and be recovered in flight. So it's actually going to put out a system that will capture the Gremlin bring it back into the airplane so you can take it back refuel it and take it up and use it again. So it's flying aircraft carriers if you will kind of like the large Navy airships did back in the 30s with catching aircraft in flight and bringing them back aboard. One of the big issues is swarms. You know you've all seen swarms above the Olympics and above Super Bowl and others where hundreds if not thousands of unmanned systems are flying together. It's a big concern. We believe we have the ability on our surface ships and on our carriers and whatnot to defend against tens or dozens of attack aircraft. What if you were trying to defend against hundreds or thousands of small systems coming at you and you don't have to sink the ship you just have to destroy the radar and have a mission kill and whatnot. So swarms are something that's a real issue for all of us in the US and our allies as to how we're going to use these ourselves and how they might potentially be used against us. So we've talked about aircraft fixed wing aircraft. Let's talk a little bit about rotary wing. This is a fascinating design for a guy who apparently doesn't care too much for his legs because it's just a scary looking thing to have all those rotors flying and whatnot. But this is a more realistic version. This is the the fire scout. So this is a unmanned helicopter. It's a Bell 407 helicopter which has been converted into unmanned use. And it is designed as a surveillance platform again. It's currently in operation on US Navy and Allied ships. It usually flies on board a ship with the manned helicopter and fire scout. And so the fire scout can fly when the manned aircraft cannot or if the pilots have reached their flight time and whatnot. The fire scout can go out and do the surveillance that you need to know what's going on over the horizon. Question, can it be armed? Yes. They've done experiments with arming these vehicles and whatnot. But at this point it's primarily a reconnaissance platform. And this is the smaller version. This is an earlier version of the fire scout and again an indicator of the size of the vehicle. This is Lockheed's K-Max. And this is a fascinating use of unmanned aircraft. In Iraq and Afghanistan we found that the IEDs were one of the biggest threats. And we would take caravans of trucks to resupply outlying posts and they were subject to attack by IEDs and other factors. So the Marines said well what if we didn't have to use the roads at all? What if we could fly our supplies direct to the forward operating base with an unmanned helicopter? So this is K-Max and it weighs 6,000 pounds and it can lift 6,000 pounds. And it flies unmanned and it has kind of a rotary device so we can actually take four pallets of payload to four different locations. Operator on the ground at the end just puts a laser spot on the ground and the system will deliver the product wherever you need it. Flew very successfully. It went over to Afghanistan for a six-month test. Stayed there for three years. And now the question that Marines are asking and armies asking as well, you know, do we have money in the budget to buy a logistics helicopter that will kind of follow in the mode of the K-Max and give us that capability? This is a very interesting device. This is called the V-BAT and certainly the Navy folks in the audience know that there's always been a desire to have an aviation capability on a small combatant. We've done it a lot of different ways. This is a platform that flies straight off the deck, off the helo deck. It then rotates into horizontal flight, flies to whatever its mission area is, surveillance or again could be weapons carrying. Then it comes back, tilts its nose up and lands right back there on the landing spot. And it's a ducted fan so you can see pictures of the crew just going out there and grabbing this thing and setting it down on the deck of the ship. So it is also used ashore. A lot of interest again by special operating forces and others. You can take this system and take it out of the package, set it up and have it fly in about 10 minutes and can fly it for extended periods doing whichever of those missions you want it to do. It's getting a lot of interest. So let's look even smaller. We keep getting smaller and smaller here. This is the Instant Eye quad rotor and the Marines have decided that every squad should have their own organic unmanned air system. So quads for squads is the term and you can see the operator lifting that thing into the air. And again the idea is always what's going on. I want to know what's on the other side of the hill before I have to go over there and fight with it. So this has been very successful and thousands of these systems are in operation. Getting even smaller is the Black Hornet nano drone and you can see how small that is. That is designed again as a reconnaissance device. The troops will wear a carrier unit on their chest and they take this thing out. They throw it in the air. They can see on their control unit what's being seen. They can fly it around the target for about 15 minutes and then bring it back, pick it up, recharge it and send it out again. So these have been again very very popular with the special operating folks both in UK, US and other services and whatnot. But it looks like a toy but it's absolutely not a toy because if you can save the life of an individual because you're able to fly over that compound into that area and see what's going on it is a tremendous asset. On the civilian side this is a concept for a unmanned aerial vehicle taxi. Chinese company called Ehang and the notion here is you go to the taxi, you get in it, you look at your iPad, you push a button say take me to Providence. It lifts off no pilot, no parachute, just one terrified passenger and it takes you to where you want to go. And there's a lot of money being spent by a lot of companies Uber and Lyft and others that say you know this is the future is the ability to be able to go and call a helicopter in to wherever you need to go for whatever transportation needs you may have without having the pilot requirement that you would have otherwise. So I'm not sure I'm ready for that but this is another design for something called a volocopter and that's me at the Singapore air show inside. It can be manned or it can be unmanned and again you can see that round structure and there's rotors electric rotors on all of those facilities around the the circumference of the device there. So again there's a lot of flight tests being done, a lot of overseas action, FAA a little more difficult to work in the U.S. with some of these new designs and whatnot so a lot of the work's being done overseas and then hopefully once they've proven the concept we may see them fly in in U.S. airspace. You know I'm a firm believer in the FAA doing their job you know I have to fly aircraft too and I want to make sure we don't hit anything that we shouldn't be flying alongside and whatnot so I encourage the FAA to do what makes sense but don't be overly restrictive in what they're trying to do. This is a small drone there are literally hundreds of thousands of these basically kids drones this is one you may remember back in January 15 that somebody decided I wonder if I could fly that on the White House lawn and so they did and got everybody excited because they're very very difficult you know they're they're mostly composite or plastic materials they don't really show up on radar they're easy to fly you fly low and then you jump over the fence with the aircraft and you do whatever you want to do with it so a lot of concerns with you know how do you do the counter UAV the counter unmanned aerial vehicle mission and so there's a number of ways that have been looked at this is the the best picture in the whole presentation this is what I call my John Wayne picture and this is a system called Skywall it's a counter UAS system and the company brought it to the front lawn there the War College and it's a device it has a compressed gas canister in the back it has a rangefinder viewfinder you basically follow the UAV as it's coming over and when you lock your crosshair is on it to give you a beep beep beep and you press the trigger and it launches a projectile projectile gets near the target splits open drops out a net and a parachute so the net captures the drone the parachute brings it down so it not only protects the people below it from being hit in the head with the thing it also gives you the ability to go and find the drone and hopefully try and figure out where it came from so this system is also has permanently installed versions that can protect buildings runways etc i've seen it in use protecting air force one on some of its flights and whatnot so it's a an interesting answer it's relatively short range but that's where you need to pick these things off in in many occasions this is another version this is a drone killer and this is a jamming device so this will actually jam the control signal that is controlling the drone the problem is it also tends to jam other systems radios if you're using it in a civilian environment it tends to screw up everybody's reception and whatnot so it's not as good as a kinetic version like sky wall but in some applications it's it's very efficient and a number of companies are providing these systems and they've even trained hawks to go and capture drones so the some people complain well wait a minute the hawks are going to hurt their little claws so they got little Kevlar gloves and put them on the claws of the hawks and so when they attacked the drones they didn't hurt their claws so is it practical i don't know in fact these these birds will knock these things out of the sky and whatnot but it's just an indicator of some of the things that are being tried in the counter uas mission so let's switch to unmanned maritime vehicles this is kind of a look at a couple of different potential designs this is the sea hunter and this is built by load light lightos corporation and it is an unmanned platform it was originally designed as the autonomous continuous trail unmanned vehicle active and the notion there was it was going to find us enemy submarine and stay on top of it and follow it for days weeks whatever at a time they have done that mission but they've also said this can do a lot more than that and so they've built a second one the sea hawk is now in operation and it has gone totally unmanned from san diego to hawaii and back all with autonomous control it has a deckhouse on there but in reality there would be be no one aboard so it's just one indicator of what we're thinking about for unmanned surface vehicles this is a picture of a chinese vehicle looks strangely familiar and awful lot like like sea hunter and whatnot but you know we're studying these things and our opponents are just studying them as well and you know it's long been known you don't have to necessarily develop the technology if you're able to steal the technology and that that has been done on a number of occasions this is ghost fleet overlord so the intent here was let's take a offshore oil derrick support vehicle and convert it to unmanned use and the strategic capabilities office go has purchased several of these ships and converted them to unmanned operation and there was enough deck space there that you can fly helicopters you could theoretically be a weapons platform and so they have transited from san norfolk to san diego 98 percent of the time totally unmanned they've had observers on board but no one is operating the systems on a daily basis so there is now the u.s navy has a surface development group in san diego and they have sea hunter the ghost fleet overlord ships lcs and a number of other aircraft surface ships and they're trying to decide exactly how these things are going to be used you may have seen the chief naval operations admiral gilday a few weeks ago said the u.s navy needs 500 ships in its fleet and 150 of them should be unmanned pretty bold statement and we're not exactly sure but there's a lot of design work being done on small medium and large unmanned surface vessels so what would they do would they travel with a carrier battle group and be pickets out front doing surveillance work well would they be carrying many many weapons and be a an arsenal ship such as shown here where you'd have hundreds of missiles on board and they would be targeted and launched from this vehicle targeted from the man platform so navy's taking a hard look at it congress has gotten in the mix and said you know are you guys sure that you can take a large sized ship and put it to sea for six to nine months and not touch it can you really have the technology it would allow that to do it and so what the u.s navy has said well we're going to build a shore base prototype and we're going to start it and we're going to run it for six months and see how it goes and if we have problems we're there so we can fix it a lot of discussion so maybe there's a flyaway team on a surface ship that is able to go aboard the unmanned ship and do repairs as necessary but there's a lot of systems that you know can work for extended periods of time without any on-hand maintenance and so that's what we're hoping this will be able to do for us this is a design for an unmanned cargo ship and cargo folks are saying do we really need anybody aboard that ship or could we operate it from a central location in london or somewhere and the ship itself understands the rules of the road will avoid collisions you'll be basically controlling it from a remote location and whatnot and can you do that and then save the cost of having that crew and whatnot aboard so a lot of work being done in this area a lot of work being done on you once you get into port can you unload it robotically without having the huge shore side facilities that are necessary and whatnot so much more than military looking at these issues this is an interesting device called the sail drone and just a couple of months ago several of these were launched from newport harbour operating on behalf of university of rhode island and they've gone off for a six month tour in the uh atlantic looking at the Gulf Stream and measuring temperature depth salinity all the kind of things that you're you're interested in particularly if you're a submarine or but if you're an oceanographer and there are solar panels they're providing electrician electricity but that's a solid wing and that wing will move just like a sailboat wing will move but it's commanded from a facility in oakland california so amazingly these things are out there floating around in the ocean commanded from a command center in oakland and going where they need to go to do their mission pretty robust they actually sailed sailed around through a hurricane and it survived so there are hundreds of these things and plans for many many more to be out giving you long term surveillance of the ocean both for military and for civilian purposes so we've talked about air systems we've talked about surface systems and talked a little about undersea systems this is an eye test for you but it simply indicates there's a whole family of vehicles from small small ones that can be handled by two individuals all the way up to extremely large these are some of the smaller versions you can see them being launched there are a number of these the U.S. Navy flies or uses these for surveillance ocean surveillance etc and there are bigger ones and this is kind of the prime example this is the echo voyager which is a similar version of supporting a program called orca this is me at the launching of orca and i didn't have my blue shirt but there i put the blue shirt on this thing is an amazing submarine and that's the size of it it's 80 feet long it's eight feet in diameter it has a cargo carrier area of 34 feet in length and so you can see there myself and the the echo voyager and so what's it going to do okay well you could open that top and you can launch missiles you can launch UAVs you can open the bottom and put out mines you can open the top put out seals it will dive to 11 000 feet depth of water i say again 11 000 1100 feet of depth is pretty pretty significant 11 000 is almost unheard of but it's designed to do that it is a free flood hull with aluminum pressure vessels that control all the electronics if you build those pressure vessels with titanium instead of out of aluminum you go to 18 000 feet depth of water truly truly remarkable Boeing spent 100 million dollars of their own money to develop the echo voyager you know if you build it they will come well in fact us navy is very interested the oil and gas industry is very interested oil and gas has more money than do d they're interested in using these things for surveillance for pipeline construction for laying undersea cables inspecting undersea cables a lot of those kind of missions the u.s. navy is kind of yeah that's fine you know i would just assume the enemy not know whether that target is u.s. navy or that's Gulf oil or that's somebody else out there floating around significant interest in uh in our allies you know the japan maritime self-defense force and others are very interested in the potential capability so navy has ordered five of these they're currently being built by Huntington Ingalls shipyard and then they'll be outfitted by Boeing and Boeing says it's a truck and you tell us what you want to do so it's diesel electric it'll operate for about 48 hours at a time on its batteries then it comes up to periscope depth puts up a snorkel runs a diesel generator and recharges its battery and goes off to do its mission and so it's designed to do missions of six to nine months at a time again this is an opportunity where you're not going to be able to touch the machine but can you keep it operating for that extended period it'll come to the surface it'll if it's doing a surveillance mission it'll send that data back you can reprogram it reassign it to what you want it to do about uh 50 to 100 million dollars a copy there's a lot of money in my bank account but not a lot when you're comparing it to a billion several billion dollar man submarine it can't do everything a man submarine can do obviously but it can do a lot of things and that will relieve the man submarines to do uh more challenging missions but what you want to do is lay off a coast somewhere lay off a harbor somewhere observe what's going on and whatnot uh echo voyager slash orca is certainly a way that potentially can be done very quickly we'll talk about ground systems this is a pack but the military the army and marine forces and whatnot ied as i mentioned earlier the the greatest loss of life and most significant wounds and whatnot were because of ied's improvised explosive devices so the military has got a number of robots to help us in that mission this is pack bot and the idea here is you send it down range to see if that uh piece of paper is a piece of trash or it's covering an explosive device if you need to destroy that device the robot will leave an explosive package and back away and detonate the device uh very very successful a lot of different versions this is the mars the mobile armed robotic system and this is almost like a mini tank so as you can see there it has a machine gun it has a laser dazzler it has a tear gas dispenser it has a microphone and a speaker system and whatnot and it's controlled by an operator that's one of the former presidents of the war college and when i told base security i was bringing a robot with a machine gun through the gate they said come talk to me john we need to check this thing out but it uh has been used uh experimentally that it's been used on the dmz between north and south korea and the notion is it is always under human control uh big argument about do we give a machine the authority to make a kill decision the u.s position is no we do not there will be an operator on the loop in the loop whichever the case may be and whatnot but uh fascinating capability this is called mutt and the marines marines are very forward leaning on unmanned systems and this notion here is there a way to offload some of the weight from a trooper's back people don't realize that a modern infantryman will carry more weight on his or her back than a knight in shining armor used to have uh with his suit of armor so you take some uh soldier or marine you fly him to some location you throw him out put his stuff on his back and ask him to go do the job say welcome we offload some of that can we offload weight food batteries maybe a weapon system and whatnot and this is a design for one of those kind of looks like the guy in the back with a gun doesn't trust it because he's pointing the gun at it this is a whole family of everything from really small ones that you throw in the window it goes in there and it looks at what the target might be and whatnot to a large version there with wheels which would be the the mule that would go alongside the troops carrying all that material boston dynamics has done a lot of work you may have seen some of these on tv you know making a robot walk like a human being really got to be easy we've seen it done in movies for decades well guess what it's really hard and so uh boston dynamics has done tremendous work with various systems this is atlas and if you want to have some fun google uh google atlas the robot picks up the box that guy takes the hockey puck knocks it out of the robot's hand the robot bends over picks up the box again he knocks it out of his hand then you can see the robot looking at the guy and saying when we take over you're the first guy because you were really making my life miserable so a lot of different uses uh there was a design for a uh shipboard firefighting robot do you have to have a human being to go into that space uh dewater it uh put out the fire and whatnot or can you have a robot do it operating on a shipboard environments tough stepping over uh door frames and other obstacles and whatnot but uh significant work being done in that area this is uh the course we teach unmanned systems and conflict in the 21st century uh we pre-pandemic we would bring the operators in here and we'd do our own little version of battle bots out there in the patio and whatnot with a whole range of systems that are in use so driverless cars will whip through very very quickly uh uh you know tesla and lots of other manufacturers now are doing driverless cars you know they are not totally driverless even tesla says you need to have your hands on the steering wheel and be ready to take over when necessary there have been a number of deadly accidents and in some cases they found that the drivers were asleep one was watching a video the video was still playing when they took his body out of the car and whatnot so you know there will come a day when you can get in the car and say take me to chicago and go to sleep it's not here yet and there's a significant amount of work yet to be done before that's happening but you know billions of dollars being spent to to make these systems work on the civilian side this is a system called zipline it's being used in africa pretty extensively the roads and whatnot are all not always the best particularly in rainy season and whatnot so the idea here is if they need to move medicine blood samples whatever the case may be they will fly it to the location the bomb bay opens and drops it out with a parachute and the people on the ground recover it they've made tens of thousands of flights very very successfully this is a notion for a flying defibrillator machine and that's been used in actual use uh precision agriculture you know can you use drones to fly over your field and find out where there are bugs where there's not enough water and those kind of factors use these systems they're used overseas extensively to do the kind of spraying that we do with manned aircraft you could do it with unmanned aircraft this is uh google air's design uh for a notion that says we're going to fly this thing over we're going to drop it in your backyard with whatever you ordered there have been burritos delivered by drone there have been all kinds of things delivered by drone we'll see what happens and this is kind of a design that amazon has actually patented for a warehouse in the sky that says hey if you're at a ball game and you want a t-shirt you tell us and we'll bring it down by drone so does it happen remains to be seen so if you want to learn more my book i recommend one nation under drones that's me on top of the uh the hotel in singapore those are my pasty white feet and i apologize for showing that picture so are there any questions anyone in the auditorium carry do you have anything uh on thank you professor jackson we had a couple of questions that come in over chat one of the questions was uh for these you know smaller type drones how difficult is it to learn how to operate them very very easy uh you know particularly they are now getting smarter and smarter uh and they've got features that if you lose your your common com link they come home uh there are systems that can be embedded in them to keep them away from areas like uh airports because that's one of the big issues is you know sucking up one of these things in the engine of a commercial aircraft and whatnot so you can build them with geo fencing which will not allow them to fly into the area where uh you don't want them to fly so yeah they are uh so good to dgi which is a chinese company has about a 70 percent share of the uh of the small drone hobbyist market and whatnot uh but there are some u.s manufacturers that are doing them too but you know you can buy them for anything from you know $25 up to thousands of dollars and then just one one final question over chat these smaller type drones have infrared and night vision capabilities really it's a function of how much money do you want to spend and what do you want it to do but uh the military versions like the uh the switchblade and whatnot you know it'll have the capability if you in a daytime scenario you can actually see your target it'll give you that picture if it's night it'll give you an infrared picture and it also do a thermal attack mode so uh even though you know the one is 51 inches that's a pretty good size vehicle so you can put a lot in there and you get the extended you know up to 45 minutes of the flight time and whatnot and you get multiple sensor capability but the thing about the uh drones is that you have a wave-off capability you got an artillery round you launch it that's it it's going to go wherever it's going to go ballistic land whatnot if you're using a drone you've got the ability to watch where it's going and if at the last minute uh you know a child a bus whatever happens to go in there you've got the ability to wave off you can dearm the warhead and bring it back around and recover it in a net and use it again so the earlier switchblades were designed that when you launched it it was going to detonate so if you didn't have a target then you just drive it into drive it into the ground but they uh they give the individual soldiers a pretty remarkable capability and then one final question just came in can you talk a little bit about the legal measures to control drones and how that's evolving as well as um are police using drones yeah there's a lot of issues about the legality and ethics of using these systems uh uh you know the us has a pretty extensive process that they go through to to find a target make sure it's a legitimate target to survey the area if they decide it is in fact a target they're going to strike they strike that target minimize collateral damage and whatnot uh some of the other folks who use these uh hezbollah and uh non-state actors and whatnot aren't quite as concerned about the legal niceties and even the the moral niceties but us i think takes an extreme approach to make sure we minimize any kind of collateral damage you know fog of war it happens very difficult airborne platform to detect is that a shovel in his hands or is that a rifle in his hands so if there's questions we generally do not attack that target but there have been instances when uh when we've hit the wrong targets uh the uh there's an organization called the campaign to stop killer robots uh steven hawking when he was alive was part of that program a lot of other very high-end folks would say we just shouldn't use these things at all and they they lead you down a slippery slope and one of the issues is you know do does having this capability lower the bar to going to war and i always make the case that you know if uh tem schultz makes me mad and i want to go over there and punch him in the nose there's a pretty good chance he's going to punch me back so i want to think about that but if i could push a button and his nose gets punched am i more likely to do it you bet so the same thing in a military context you know if you know that you can strike that target without risking any us personnel lives and whatnot are you more inclined to do it now that also applies to uh uh cruise missiles and other devices and whatnot to give you that standoff capability and it's kind of the argument been going on for centuries you know when the longbow was invented the idea you know is it safe is it right for that bowman to be standing off and shooting that thing in a far far distance so it's uh it's a discussion that will go on indefinitely as these systems get more and more sophisticated i think they'll become more and more accurate and we hope that leadership is going to make the decision that we only employ lethal force when necessary and we do it at the minimum level necessary one one final question came in uh talking about naval doctrine and i think that this is a good uh bridge to what you were just referring to and in people's concern about how do we um look at doctrine and potentially like even here uh and another part of the war college in war gaming we we test out the use of these unmanned systems uh to confirm that we're able to you know meet all legal requirements can you talk a little bit about that about that yeah what the war gamers are very very interested in uh in in saying okay let let me do what we would normally do but let me add a new operation to it uh there was an international maritime exercise just completed a few weeks ago uh 60 nations involved over 80 different unmanned systems and this was actual hardware so you know they had fire scout out there they had sail drones out there they had other uh vehicles flying and whatnot and an opportunity to say you know let me think outside the box is the old saying and whatnot and how are these things going to be used and make sure the operators have a notion of what they're all about and that's one of the things i enjoy most about the course we teach here at the naval war college because i say you know when you come into the military as a junior officer there's a certain level of technology you know how it works as you get more senior and you stay around longer the technology matures and you're comfortable with that well these unmanned systems have kind of dropped in from the top and now you have commanders captains flag officers being asked to make decisions about systems that maybe they don't know that much about so we're very hopeful that the students who take the course here have an opportunity to look at all these issues one week is legal and ethical issues where we get uh uh air force rpa remotely pilot an aircraft pilot who has a phd in ethics from oxford came live in the classroom and talked to the students about let's think about these things one of the books we use is called killing without heart and the question there is if you're not willing to die for something are you willing to kill for something and that's a very interesting discussion and you know it and they talk about do you have the the marshal uh attitudes and whatnot and i think it gets carried away when you talk about drones because those arguments can still be made in a lot of other systems and whatnot but the key is to look at what the capabilities are today look over the horizon as to what the capabilities are going to be don't make decisions based on the capability of today's systems because they are only going to get better and pw a singer who wrote the book wired for war says you know in 20 years the systems we have will be a million times more efficient more effective than they are today and okay what if we're wrong maybe it's only a hundred thousand times better but still imagine what those capabilities can be so understand what's going on today we had a display here on monday and we had some high school students here looking at these systems and that's really what we like to see i'm glad to see youth here tonight to say you know this is where the future is going and you need to understand the limitations and the capabilities of these systems and whatnot and make sure that as you're thinking how you're going to fight the next war you've got some other errors arrows in your quiver anything else yes sir yes sir good afternoon thank you i know a lot of your purview focuses on the offensive use of these unmanned systems are you able to speak to or talk to defense against these systems in the case of adverse adversaries yeah that's uh that's the thing is you know we're doing what we're doing the bad guys are doing what they want to do so the counter uas kind of stuff that you saw is you know really small scale counters to this stuff there's a lot of work with lasers it looks like a good way to intercept the larger size drones the reaper and larger size drones so there there is you know a lot of time and effort being spent to look at what's going on the chinese have a lot of very robust systems russians not as much but the chinese are very very strong and they're selling these to anybody who wants to buy them us has a pretty strict export rules on on these systems and so it's hard to hard to buy them and they're expensive you know you're talking about 15 to 20 million dollars for a reaper system you know the turks will sell the one that they're using for you know 8 million 10 million whatever the case may be and whatnot so there is a concern about drone proliferation just like there is about nuclear weapons but jamming is one of the most significant ways we may be able to to fight these systems and whatnot but it's a constant battle between offense and defense and we're playing them playing on both sides so anything else gary are we good to go i think they were good to go thank you professor jackson for that excellent lecture with that we'll close for this week and everyone have a wonderful evening thank you very much