{"id":4063,"date":"2019-06-20T10:58:12","date_gmt":"2019-06-20T13:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nachodelatorre.com.ar\/mosconi\/?p=4063"},"modified":"2019-06-20T10:58:12","modified_gmt":"2019-06-20T13:58:12","slug":"sistemas-autonomos-en-las-pequenas-fracciones-a-pie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/?p=4063","title":{"rendered":"Sistemas aut\u00f3nomos en las peque\u00f1as fracciones a pie"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/u>Varios a\u00f1os de experimentaci\u00f3n acerca de la viabilidad de empleo de sistemas aut\u00f3nomos en las peque\u00f1as fracciones, han permitido arribar a conclusiones acerca de su utilidad real en operaciones. Mini-drones a\u00e9reos como el\u00a0Black Hornet<\/strong>, de solo unos gramos de peso ya est\u00e1n siendo incorporados en el US ARMY para su empleo en Afganist\u00e1n. Por el contrario, se ha observado que los UGV para transporte de cargas, presentan m\u00e1s inconvenientes que beneficios reales a las tropas a pie.<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON: This summer, Army soldiers will deploy to\u00a0Afghanistan<\/a>\u00a0with air support literally in the palm of their hands: the 1.16-ounce\u00a0Black Hornet<\/a>\u00a0mini-drone. New ground robots are entering service too, next year \u2014 not to fight but to\u00a0haul supplies,\u00a0<\/a>at least at first \u2014 but field tests have convinced the Army to issue these often-cumbersome mechanical mules to specialists and only loan them to frontline troops as needed. By contrast, soldiers are so\u00a0consistently and unequivocally enthused<\/a>\u00a0about the mini-drones that the Army is buying 9,000 systems \u2014 each with two drones \u2014 over three years to issue to its smallest and historically most vulnerable units, nine-man\u00a0infantry squads<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The mini-drone and larger robots are all part of a wider\u00a0revolution in the long-suffering infantry<\/a>, a revolution sparked in large measure by former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. The Marines, Mattis\u2019s old service, have issued\u00a0upgraded 5.56 mm rifles<\/a>\u00a0and are\u00a0adding a specialized drone operator to every rifle squad<\/a>. The Army is going much farther, developing new\u00a06.8 mm rifles<\/a>,\u00a0high-tech targeting goggles<\/a>,\u00a0virtual-reality training<\/a>, and, of course, robots.<\/p>\n

Now, none of these unmanned systems is truly autonomous, so they require a human to run them by remote control, which in turn requires a functioning battlefield network that hasn\u2019t been shut down by\u00a0enemy jamming<\/a>. The FLIR Black Hornet has a lot of automated functions and only flies short missions, so you don\u2019t need a soldier babysitting it all the time. Ground robots, however, require much more oversight, because they have to avoid rocks, bogs, tree stumps, and other obstacles that no unmanned air vehicle has to worry about and that\u00a0artificial-vision software still struggles to spot<\/a>. The Army is eager to improve the technology so that, instead of one soldier remote-controlling one robot, they can have one soldier overseeing a largely autonomous swarm. But even today\u2019s limited autonomy allows for big changes on the battlefield.<\/p>\n

\"UK<\/p>\n

Drones For Everyone<\/strong><\/p>\n

The palmtop Black Hornet \u2014 dubbed Soldier-Borne Sensor (SBS) by the Army \u2014 is\u00a0already in the hands<\/a>\u00a0(literally) of a brigade of the elite 82nd Airborne that\u2019s about to\u00a0deploy to Afghanistan<\/a>. The second unit scheduled to get the mini-drone, starting this fall, is the 1st\u00a0Security Force Assistance Brigade<\/a>, which has already served in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

For the first time, a squad leader will have the ability to scout ahead by air\u00a0before<\/em>exposing human soldiers on the ground. The SBS has sensor options for both night and day, and it can fly about 20 minutes before needing to recharge.<\/p>\n

But the squad-level mini-drone is just the entry model. Larger units will get larger, more capable, but also more expensive and more maintenance-hungry drones.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur vision is every echelon has unmanned aerial systems,\u201d said\u00a0Don Sando<\/a>, civilian deputy to the commander of the Army\u2019s\u00a0infantry and armor center<\/a>\u00a0at Fort Benning, Ga. \u201cThe question is, how many?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Army<\/p>\n

While squads get the Black Hornet SBS, platoons will get the slightly larger Short-Range Reconnaissance (SRR) drone, Sando and other Army officials told reporters in a conference call last week. A series of tests this month, September, and January will whittle six SRR competitors down to one that will enter service in April 2020. The winner must weigh three pounds or less, fly for 30 minutes, and be able to \u201cperch and stare,\u201d landing in a vantage point overlooking a target area so it can keep watch without burning through its flight time.<\/p>\n

Companies will stick with the current\u00a0RQ-11 Raven<\/a>, which is still small enough that soldiers launch it by picking it up and throwing it.<\/p>\n

Battalions currently use the Raven as well, but the Army plans to develop a new Long-Range Reconnaissance drone for them to use. The LRR isn\u2019t an official program yet, however.<\/p>\n

Brigades currently have the\u00a0RQ-7 Shadow<\/a>, but that aging system needs\u00a0a catapult to launch and a runway to land<\/a>. It will be replaced by the\u00a0Future Tactical Unmanned Aerial System<\/a>\u00a0(FTUAS), which takes off and lands vertically like a mini-helicopter, starting in 2021.<\/p>\n

Divisions currently use the Grey Eagle, a variant of the venerable Predator, but the Army is experimenting with potential\u00a0Advanced UAS<\/a>\u00a0drones to replace it too.<\/p>\n

\"Army<\/p>\n

Ground Bots For Some<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Army is also fielding ground robots, but these machines are still much clumsier and harder to work with than aerial drones, so they\u2019re being issued only to specialist units. That includes what was formerly called the\u00a0Squad<\/em>\u00a0Multipurpose Equipment Transport but is now renamed the\u00a0Small\u00a0<\/em>Multipurpose Equipment Transport, because it\u2019s not going to belong to an individual squad.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0SMET<\/a>, by either name, is still a small unmanned ground vehicle, about the size of a golf cart, designed to trundle along with the foot troops, hauling supplies and gear like an old-fashioned pack mule. It must carry 1,000 pounds of supplies and gear over 60 miles in 72 hours, trundling along with foot troops, and provide three kilowatts of power to recharge batteries for night vision goggles, radios, and other electronics.<\/p>\n

\"Textron<\/p>\n

Four competitors remain in contention: the\u00a0Polaris MRZR<\/a>,\u00a0Howe & Howe Grizzly<\/a>,\u00a0HDT Wolf<\/a>, and\u00a0General Dynamics MUTT<\/a>. \u201cThey\u2019re all viable candidates. They all met the standards of range, offloading power, silent watch capability, payload carrying,\u201d Sando said. \u201cSoldier feedback on all of them was very comparable with regard to what missions they\u2019re good for \u2014 and what conditions they\u2019re not appropriate for.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Army plans to field the winner starting next year to selected training centers, combat brigades, and support companies \u2014 but not infantry squads. \u201cWe found out in the operational tech demonstration [that] it can best be supported now at the battalion level,\u201d Sando said, which is the lowest echelon of an infantry unit to include technical specialists such as a heavy weapons company. The Army\u2019s objective is to incorporate the new technologies\u00a0without<\/em>\u00a0adding personnel to take care of them.<\/p>\n

The issue with SMET is not just the maintenance the robots require \u2014 though that can be a large burden for a squad of nine \u2014 but also their limited mobility. \u201cThere are places where we ask our soldiers to go where nothing else can go\u2026\u00a0jungle terrain<\/a>, steep embankments, water, and\u00a0dense urban environments<\/a>,\u201d Sando said. \u201cThere are areas soldiers can walk and crawl and climb that we just couldn\u2019t put a vehicle of this size with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The SMET remains very useful for long marches with heavy loads, the bane of infantry soldiers increasingly overburdened by\u00a0body armor<\/a>, ammunition, and electronics. Being able to recharge gear from the robot instead of\u00a0carrying several days\u2019 worth of batteries<\/a>for every item of equipment is itself a significant reduction in weight. Future SMET variants, Sando said, might carry long-range sensors, communications relays, or\u00a0even weapons<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But when foot troops have to go places you can only go on foot, they need to be able to leave the robot vehicles behind and let someone else take care of them. By contrast, Sando said, \u201cthe\u00a0Soldier-Borne Sensor<\/a>\u00a0is smaller than a pack of cigarettes, [so] I can use it when I need it, I can put it back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fuente:\u00a0<\/strong>https:\/\/breakingdefense.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Varios a\u00f1os de experimentaci\u00f3n acerca de la viabilidad de empleo de sistemas aut\u00f3nomos en las peque\u00f1as fracciones, han permitido arribar a conclusiones acerca de su… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,2,29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4063"}],"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=4063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4063\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}