View from the Labs The Human Advantage – and the Machines By CAPT George Galdorisi, USN (Ret.)
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ur Rotor Review editor reminded us that this year’s theme is "The Human Advantage" and exploring how our leadership and investment in personnel and family will bring the competitive edge needed in warfighting. Great high concept. That said, I’d like to come at this from a different direction, that is, not just how we nurture our human capital, and not just how we field brilliant machines to help our warfighters fly, fight and win, but more importantly, how we ensure that when they team together they deliver maximum warfighting effectiveness. I teed up this idea of manned-unmanned teaming in a column last year. Here is part of what I shared then: The importance of focusing on a small bundle of technologies to ensure that the Navy can prevail in tomorrow’s conflict was emphasized by the Vice Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral William Lescher, in his keynote address at the symposium when he said: The four pillars of the CNO’s NAVPLAN are: readiness, capability, capacity and Sailors. There are four cross-cutting technologies critical to supporting these pillars: unmanned systems, artificial intelligence, machine learning and mannedunmanned teaming. This address by our first rotary wing four-star put a punctuation mark on what can be accomplished if we use these emerging technologies to enhance the capabilities of our UAVs in order to achieve optimal man-machine teaming and make these capable platforms our loyal wingmen. During the Symposium Flag Panel, our senior leaders in the Naval Aviation community said a number of things that applied directly to the VCNO’s remarks: • • • • •
Manpower currently consumes 70% of the Department of the Navy’s budget. Naval Aviation is on a glideslope to be approximately 40% unmanned circa 2035. Current Navy UAS are not really autonomous, but require one or more operators “hands-on” at all times. The DoD’s “Third Offset Strategy” emphasizes man-unmanned teaming as a central concept. The P-8 Poisiden-MQ-4C Triton and the MH-60 Seahawk-MQ-8C Fire Scout are held out as exemplars of manned-unmanned teaming.
Taken together, it is clear that the senior leaders in our Naval Aviation Enterprise “get” the importance of making our UAVs loyal wingmen to our manned aircraft. However, along with these positive statements, what we didn’t hear at the Symposium suggests that we still have a great deal of work to do to achieve this desired end state. Here is what I did not hear: • • • •
I did not hear that there is a plan to leverage big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning to make Naval Aviation’s UAS more autonomous. I did not hear that there is a concurrent plan to enable Triton and Fire Scout to perform discrete tasks, without direction, once on-station. I did not hear that there is a plan to enable Triton and Fire Scout to curate data aboard the platform, rather than send terabytes of data down a link. I did not hear that there is a plan to have Triton and Fire Scout communicate directly with their respective manned aircraft.
I did not hear that there is a plan (or even a desire) to achieve manned-unmanned teaming with the P-8 Poisiden-MQ-4C Triton and the MH-60R/S-MQ-8C. What can we do to accelerate manned-machine teaming in our community between the MH-60R/S-MQ-8C? A great deal. As a start, pick up your iPhone and ask Siri for something easy breezy. Now ask yourself: Why can’t the pilots in the MH-60R/S talk directly to a Fire Scout armed with artificial intelligence and machine learning so it can operate fully autonomously. Rotor Review #156 Spring '22
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