Militarized drone swarms coming

The effectiveness of drones in combat has been proven with deadly effect in the war in Ukraine, where single, unmanned aerial vehicles have been used for observing the enemy or deploying weapons against them. The effectiveness of multiple drones working together in combat, however, has yet to be seen, due to the technology’s current limits, which are quickly falling by the wayside as militaries, scientists and commercial entities pursue swarm technology.

China in particular has been active in this field. It recently launched its autonomous research ship, Zhu Hai Yun, which can be remotely controlled and operate on its own while serving as a drone carrier capable of launching dozens of unmanned vehicles.

The 88.5-meter-long vessel has a wide deck capable of carrying dozens of airborne, surface and underwater drones. The drone mothership, built by a subsidiary of China’s largest shipbuilder, is billed as an oceanographic research vessel, but observers were quick to note how easily its technology could be transferred to military applications.

“When dealing with China, we rarely have perfect insight into their intentions, but as we have seen with its activities in the South China Sea, scientific ventures can be a precursor or otherwise support military objectives,” Matthew Funaiole, senior fellow of China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Business Insider.

The drone-ship news followed a viral video of a swarm of 10 drones racing through a bamboo forest in China. The “Return of the Jedi”-esque scene was the product of research done by a team of Zhejiang University scientists, who developed an algorithm that allowed the individual mini aircraft to autonomously navigate the complex environment as a group by incorporating flight efficiency, obstacle avoidance and swarm coordination. Furthermore, the drones did not rely on GPS to get through the forest.

“A high-quality trajectory thus can be obtained after exhaustively exploiting the solution space within only a few milliseconds, even in the most constrained environment,” the scientists wrote in a paper presenting the experiment.

Outside of the research world, drone-swarm progress is being made on the commercial side as well.

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