Soldier feedback<\/strong><\/p>\nThe three-week event here had multiple aims, but chief among them, officials said, was soldier feedback on whether the first batch of short-range Launched Effects systems is user friendly and relevant to their mission needs.<\/p>\n
In March, the service chose three off-the-shelf short-range systems that will serve as a baseline for the effort: RTX\u2019s Coyote Block 3, Anduril\u2019s Altius 600 and AEVEX Aerospace\u2019s Atlas. It bought a limited number of each vehicle and distributed them to three units during the user demonstration in August, with each unit focused on a single system.<\/p>\n
Brig. Gen. Cain Baker, director of the Army\u2019s Future Vertical Lift Cross Functional Team, said in an interview that while the service has experimented with Launched Effects at several exercises, the user demonstration was the first time it gave them to operators for hands-on training.<\/p>\n
\u201cGetting that feedback from the soldiers, from the commander in the field, helps us drive industry from the standpoint of what are the pros and cons of the capability,\u201d Baker said. \u201cFrom a larger perspective across the Army, it drives our doctrine, our organization, the materiel solution, the training aspect.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the first week of the demonstration, each of the three 7th ID units participating in the event conducted initial equipment training on their assigned system. They learned how to set up the LEs, integrate them into their mission planning and use the flight controllers. They also conducted simulated flights.<\/p>\n
In week two, they operated the systems live for the first time, running through the setup protocol and tracking their flight path.<\/p>\n
For the third week, the units once again flew their systems but this time they applied them to a tactical scenario and had a chance to operate multiple vehicles at one time.<\/p>\n
According to soldiers and service officials, the demonstration was largely a success. Army leaders \u2014 from engineers to program executive officers \u2014 said they were impressed with how quickly soldiers adapted to the new equipment and their enthusiasm around incorporating them into operations.<\/p>\n
Medaglia said it\u2019s too early to provide a distilled rundown of the lessons learned, but she noted that the event provided invaluable data that will shape future training, requirements and operational concepts.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach of those units did not interact with each other and you saw them fight it in their specific way, with their experience and their type of expertise,\u201d Medaglia said. \u201cIt really opened our aperture on how we could leverage LE moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Defense News was on site during the second week of the demonstration, when units were transitioning from the classroom to the training ground.<\/p>\n
Spc. Jacob Richter, whose unit experimented with AEVEX\u2019s Atlas, said he came into the demonstration with no experience operating drones. He said the classroom and simulation training prepared him well for the live flight and described the system as easy to use.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a seamless transition,\u201d Richter said. \u201cThe flight simulator they had mimicked the flight almost perfectly. There was almost no change.\u201d<\/p>\n
Access to LEs means units can use an autonomous system to scout a target or gather other intelligence, and then a second vehicle can act as an attack drone for the strike mission. Richter and 1st Lt. Zach Glenn said the scout capability could allow them to fly further into restricted spaces and lessen some of the security concerns that come with sending human operators to perform that mission.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can use the scout drone to know what\u2019s ahead of us, and we can also use the attack drones with the scout to eliminate the assets we\u2019re worried about,\u201d Glenn said. \u201cIf we\u2019re worried about the enemy detecting any type of [electromagnetic] signature we\u2019re putting off with our radios, we can eliminate that ahead of time. It\u2019s just added security. It\u2019s another tool in the toolkit we can use.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lt. Col. Michael Wallace, battalion commander for the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, said getting feedback from soldiers like Glenn and Richter allows him to refine operational concepts based on their experience with the system.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re identifying some of the limiting constraints of employing it, they\u2019re seeing what the capabilities are, how to integrate it into their operations,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cThey\u2019re providing that to guys like me that have a little bit more experience on how to refine that and nest it with how we fight and how we do operations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wallace noted that getting systems in the hands of soldiers is about more than familiarizing soldiers with how they work \u2014 it\u2019s a chance to let them experiment and decide how the technology might augment or support their mission in a way someone on the outside might not have envisioned.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that\u2019s what all these great civilians are out here trying to do is get the items in the hands of the warfighter so that we don\u2019t see it for the first time when we\u2019re downrange,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ll continue to iterate on it, provide feedback and ultimately they can help inform a capability that\u2019s going to make the whole Army more lethal and more ready.\u201d<\/p>\n
Continuous iteration<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Army plans to leave some number of systems behind with units at Joint Base Lewis-McChord to continue training and improving the capability, but the service is still defining its longer-term strategy for fielding the first round of Launched Effects.<\/p>\n
In late July, the Army approved the program\u2019s acquisition strategy, which uses what\u2019s called an urgent capability acquisition pathway \u2014 an approach reserved for high-need programs slated to field in two years or less. That label, according to LE Product Manager Lt. Col. Hunter Gray, gives the program flexibility to move fast, regularly update its requirements and reopen competition to new vendors.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s something that allows us to move very quickly, to adopt technology that\u2019s ready to issue to units today and to iterate \u2014 to provide a continuously upgraded capability that\u2019s driven by user feedback and the most current state of the technology that we\u2019re seeing in industry,\u201d Gray told Defense News.<\/p>\n
That level of openness will require the service to find a balance between leveraging commercially-available equipment and making sure the systems it delivers are operationally relevant. The plan right now is to initially field off-the-shelf platforms like those it demonstrated last month and then survey industry every six months to see what new capabilities might be available, never committing to a single vendor but rather always soliciting new ideas solutions.<\/p>\n
Maj. Chris Dudley, assistant product manager for Launched Effects, said in an interview at the event that the Army\u2019s strategy is a significant departure from other acquisition programs that spend years on the front-end building an exquisite system with little to no operator input.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re sort of inverting the process and trying to get it into the soldiers\u2019 hands first, and then we\u2019ll iterate and develop on the findings that we have,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
As the Army makes its plans for fielding the baseline short-range LE systems, the service is also eyeing medium and longer-range systems using the same acquisition approach. Officials said the recent special user demonstration will inform the process for buying, fielding and crafting training plans for those platforms as well.<\/p>\n
At the same time, the service is working to make sure that its architecture for Launched Effects is modular \u2014 from the launchers they fly from to the controllers used to operate them. Having a plug-and-play infrastructure not only makes the system versatile and simpler to integrate, but it makes it easier for vendors to design systems that fit those specifications.<\/p>\n
Baker, director of the Future Vertical Lift Cross Functional Team, said the plan is to have that architecture defined over the next 18 to 24 months.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we want is really an agnostic capability to launch from air to ground,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat we don\u2019t want is to buy one type of specific launched effect to do one type of mission set and then another launched effect to do another mission. We want modularity with the program.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fuente:<\/strong> https:\/\/www.defensenews.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"El US Army lleva adelante un ambicioso programa destinado a desplegar para el a\u00f1o 2026, plataformas aut\u00f3nomas multiprop\u00f3sito en todas las divisiones operativas de esa… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17543,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17542"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17542"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17544,"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17542\/revisions\/17544"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}