A new project by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is preparing the U.S. military to win a coming conventional war by allowing swarms of missile armed aerial drones to collaborate in launching long-distance strikes against enemy warships and mobile ground targets such as tanks despite intense enemy electromagnetic jamming.

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DARPA's "Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment" (CODE) program intends to achieve these aims while reducing required communication bandwidth and decision-making burden on military personnel controlling these unmanned aircraft systems (UASs), also called unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

CODE's main objective, however, is to develop and demonstrate the value of "collaborative autonomy" or swarm attacks by packs of hunter-killer drones.  CODE will also allow UASs to perform sophisticated tasks both individually and in teams under the supervision of a single human mission commander.

The program will deliver a software system that is resilient to bandwidth limitations and communications disruptions but compatible with existing standards. It will also be capable of affordable retrofit into existing platforms such as the combat proven hunter-killer MQ-9 Reaper designed for long-distance and high altitude attacks.

Reaper can mount up to four Hellfire air-to-ground missiles and two 500 lb. GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided bombs. It can also carry the 500 lb. Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM).

If successfully demonstrated, these scalable, cost-effective capabilities should greatly enhance the survivability, flexibility and effectiveness of combat drones and reduce the development times and costs of future systems.

CODE-equipped combat drones will accomplish their missions by sharing data, negotiating assignments and synchronizing actions and communications among team members and with the commander. CODE's modular open software architecture on board the drones enables multiple CODE-equipped drones to navigate to their destinations and find, track, identify and destroy targets.

The CODE drones can also recruit similarly equipped drones from nearby friendly forces to augment their own capabilities and adapt to dynamic situations such as continuously attacking enemy targets. Phase 1 saw the development of supporting technologies for CODE.

"During Phase 1, we successfully demonstrated, in simulation, the potential value of collaborative autonomy among UASs at the tactical edge, and worked with our performers to draft transition plans for possible future operational systems," said Jean-Charles Ledé, DARPA program manager.

"Between the two teams, we have selected about 20 autonomous behaviors that would greatly increase the mission capabilities of our legacy UASs and enable them to perform complex missions in denied or contested environments in which communications, navigation, and other critical elements of the targeting chain are compromised. We have also made excellent progress in the human-system interface and open-architecture framework."

TagsDefense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment, CODE program