Army Awards BlueHalo Contract to Develop Offensive Swarming UAS Capabilities

Virginia-headquartered Blue Halo announced the award of an initial $14 million contract for the development of a HIVE small unmanned aircraft system architecture for the Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office. The contract calls for “transformational sUAS autonomous swarming capabilities” not currently available to the warfighter, Blue Halo said Thursday.

In a statement, the company said that it will employ all its resources and expertise to deliver unmatched artificial intelligence/machine learning swarm logic capabilities, communications systems, and evolving technologies within an operationally driven system-of-systems framework.

Jonathan Moneymaker, chief executive officer of BlueHalo, said that in the company’s work with the RCCTO, it intends to “achieve what has never been done before.” He added that the HIVE contract provides his company with an opportunity to “redefine what is possible through inspired engineering.”

A report by The Print describes swarm robotics as a system that consists of a large number of drones controlled by minimal human intervention. Efforts are underway to develop drones that exhibit collective self-organizing behavior through interaction and cohesion between robots, as well as the interaction of robots with the environment.

Swarming algorithms are inspired by biological studies of the swarm behavior of insects, fishes, birds and animals. Research and development on this emerging technology are focused on developing distributed artificial swarm intelligence capability, the commodification of technology for lesser cost impact and increasing state of autonomy between the UAVs, the report further said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military intends to use drone swarms to mitigate the risks faced by human pilots in combat. When fully developed, swarms of unmanned aircraft are envisioned to attack enemy assets while keeping pilots out of harm’s way, Embention said in a report.