The Battlefield Where Soldiers Disappeared... They Step Forward

[Agency for Defense Development]Unmanned technology is bringing significant changes across various industries both domestically and internationally. The defense sector is no exception. Steady technological development is underway to introduce unmanned systems into future battlefields in the near future, and there is a growing trend of adopting technologies developed in the civilian sector into defense to bring about rapid change and innovation.

In line with this, the Agency for Defense Development is developing an unmanned reconnaissance vehicle. This vehicle can perform missions such as remote and autonomous driving for reconnaissance and scouting in hazardous areas ahead of armored and mechanized units, day and night surveillance, friend-or-foe identification and remote armament, chemical agent detection, and mine detection.

▲ How to effectively operate unmanned systems= Recently, concepts have been forming around swarm systems using multiple unmanned systems for effective combat and the operation of manned-unmanned combined systems for cooperative operation. The United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is conducting research on cooperative operation of swarm systems composed of 250 UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) and UGVs (Unmanned Ground Vehicles), and has proposed the Mosaic Warfare concept to develop a battlefield operation concept with flexibility and scalability.

As the introduction of unmanned systems into the defense sector accelerates, a soon-to-be-considered issue is expected to be ‘how operators will control numerous unmanned systems.’ Research in the field of mission control is continuously being conducted in preparation for this imminent reality.

▲ Efforts for manned and unmanned systems as One Team= In future battlefield environments, all systems are expected to be networked, with a small number of operators controlling many unmanned systems. The level of operator intervention when controlling unmanned systems can be an important factor in evaluating mission control levels. The Agency for Defense Development is conducting research on intelligent mission control technology to minimize operator intervention. This technology analyzes situations based on large-scale collected data and establishes mission execution plans.

This technology performs mission control through stages of mission environment analysis, mission planning/execution/modification, and mission evaluation, and is being applied to the unmanned reconnaissance vehicle under development. In the mission environment analysis stage, mission environment construction for robot operation, threat analysis of the environment where the robot will operate, communication performance analysis for robot control, and terrain analysis for mobility are conducted. The mission planning/execution/modification stage plans and executes the robot’s mission based on the analyzed mission environment and operates and controls the robot in real time according to changes that occur. The mission evaluation stage analyzes the execution results of the planned mission to improve mission performance.

In the near future, the number of unmanned systems to be controlled is expected to increase significantly compared to the number of operators. Accordingly, the Agency for Defense Development is continuously pursuing research and development in six areas: mission planning automation, mission simulation/optimization, operator-friendly interfaces, manned-unmanned collaboration, user intent inference/response, and information fusion.

▲ Our plan for manned-unmanned combined combat operations= According to the medium- and long-term defense plans, the Agency for Defense Development will continue to develop core mission control technologies essential for the introduction of unmanned systems. Automatic mission assignment generation technology can plan and assign missions with minimal operator intervention during multi-robot operations, and cooperative autonomous planning technology enables multiple robots to collaboratively perform missions on the battlefield. Additionally, communication and survivability analysis technologies are necessary for mission planning to improve the operability of unmanned systems, and collaborative mission control automation technology will enable cooperative operations between manned and unmanned systems during simultaneous missions.

The Agency for Defense Development has embarked on developing these various technologies to prepare for future battlefields where manned and unmanned systems will be operated in combination, enabling these systems to function as ‘One Team.’ Manned-unmanned mission control technology is expected to become a defense strategic technology that effectively responds to future threats and contributes to creating a robust security environment.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.