The US military hopes that drones will be capable of changing their own missions, altering course without a human command, and buzzing through the skies in coordinated groups within the next 25 years, according to a new Defense Department report.
The US Department of Defense (DoD) explained its hopes for the upcoming decades in its Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap, released to the public last week. At nearly 150 pages, the report outlines a variety of goals for air, land, and sea vehicles — yet the unmanned aerial systems (as drones are called) are featured prominently throughout.
For all the science fiction fears drones have roused amongst the public, the technology that the military relies so heavily on is still in its relative infancy. The unmanned vehicles rely on GPS systems to determine their course and in some cases bombing routes, which explains in part why thousands of civilians across the Middle East have been killed without cause.
Critics of current US drone operations in the Middle East as well as their proliferation over the country’s airspace are unlikely to find any comfort in the DoD’s Roadmap. Officials hope to install a variety of algorithms, detection sensors, and advanced machine learning into drones that will implant in the machines a set of internal laws that give them more control over their own behavior.