Unmanned Warrior is the world's biggest robot war game, currently taking place for two weeks off the coast of Scotland. It was proposed by First Sea Lord Admiral George Zambellas to give airborne, surface, and underwater drones from various suppliers a chance to show off their prowess. Unmanned Warrior is part of Joint Warrior, an exercise involving 30 warships and submarines from 18 nations. But for the newly inaugurated robot portion, the U.S. is a strong presence, with teams from the Office of Naval Research (ONR).
As robots continue packing increased capability in smaller, lower-cost packages, these exercises are a glimpse into the future of naval warfare. Of course, none of these drones are armed for these exercises. These Unmanned Warriors are not trusted to carry weapons—at least not yet.
The first-ever Unmanned Warrior will wrap up on October 20.
The first drone to take off at Unmanned Warrior was an S-100 Camcopter, made by Austrian company Schiebel. Rather than its usual camera payload, this S-100 carried a radar warning system called Sage. It picks up radar transmissions from ships, analyses and identifies them, and plots the exact position of the radar emitter. An S-100 with Sage can track an opposing task force at sea from long range without being seen itself.
The NRQ-21 Blackjack is the US Navy's latest small drone. Made by Boeing subsidiary Insitu, the catapult-launched drone can carry a 25-pound sensor payload for 16 hours, providing persistent, long-range reconnaissance at sea. It can be flown from the smallest vessels, turning every ship into an aircraft carrier. At Unmanned Warrior, Blackjack will be flying with the ONR's new Airborne Computer Vision system that automatically spots and identifies ships without the help from humans.
To practice sub hunting you need a target, but multibillion-dollar submarines have better things to do than play hide-and-seek. Hence the AUV-62-AT, made by Swedish carmakers Saab, which claims to be the world's most advanced anti-submarine warfare training simulator. The AUV-62-AT exactly mimics the sound signature of a submarine, including the same sort of engine noise for passive sensors and gives the same sonar return for active sensors. The unmanned sub can dive to a thousand feet and dodge hunters for 20 hours.
The Unmanned Survey Vehicle from Defence Research and Development Canada is a ten-foot robotic boat which can carry a wide array of instruments. These include sonar for mapping the sea bed as well as devices for measuring temperature and underwater currents.
The USV-2600's advanced navigation keeps it in place better than a human pilot. In tests it stayed within a meter of a fixed point for ten minutes, a vital ability for precise measurements.
The WRDSS is an automated defense system developed by the ONR for harbors and other waterside areas. As the name indicates, it is mobile and can be put in place quickly with sensors including the sonar (being retrieved in the image), radar, and cameras. It automatically detects and tracks incoming threats from small boats, swimmers, divers, and unmanned submarines. Loudhailers, both above on the surface and underwater, can give warnings.
Another ONR program uses a drone as a communications relay to tie a team of robots together and link them to a remote base. From a height of a few hundred feet it can establish radio communication at far longer range than anything at sea level. As part of Unmanned Warrior, the rotary-wing drone will transfer data to and from an unmanned sub on the surface, showing how fleets of autonomous underwater drones can be controlled remotely.
The Iver-3 is participating in a segment of Unmanned Warrior known as Hell Bay, in which groups of underwater vehicles will showing how they can work together and carry out autonomous tasks like target recognition. The Iver-3, made by US company Oceanserver, is an eighty-pound craft that can operate for more than eight hours at a depth of three hundred feet, and can locate underwater mines with a magnetic sensor.
The Sea Hunter drone aircraft carries a new sensor developed by the ONR: a LIDAR, or laser-based radar able to map the sea bed in shallow water. The new LIDAR is a tenth of the size of previous systems. Sea Hunter will be used for 'rapid environmental assessment', spotting sandbanks, reefs, wrecks, or other submerged hazards which might pose a threat to naval operations. The Sea Hunter drone can be flown from a ship to rapidly survey areas which have not been properly mapped.
The C-Worker 5 is a British unmanned surface vessel powered by a direct drive diesel engine capable of traveling at five knots for seven days on one tank of fuel. It can be piloted by remote control but is also capable of autonomous operation. In Unmanned Warrior, the C-Worker 5 will operate in a team with other surface and undersea robots.
The Scan Eagle is an older drone from Boeing Insitu. Originally developed to track schools of tuna fish, it is now in service with more than twenty countries with a net capture system that makes it easy to use from a ship. The Royal Navy is due to retire its Scan Eagles in 2017, but a new version will be on show at Unmanned Warrior with an improved engine and upgraded sensors with improved stabilization.