Weapons

The Mad Scientists at DARPA Plan to Crush Russia and China with 'Swarm' Weapons

The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded Lockheed Martin and Raytheon a contract to develop ways to control swarming drones inside heavily defended airspace called CODE or Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment (CODE). Defeating so-called anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) threats—such as zones defended by advancedRussian and Chinese built integrated air defense systems—is a top priority for the United States as the world enters an era of renewed great power competition.

The key technology that underpins CODE is what DARPA calls “collaborative autonomy.” Essentially, the DARPA concept envisions a future where autonomous drones “could perform sophisticated tasks both individually and in teams under the supervision of a single human mission commander.” The drones would have to share data, decide on how to divvy up tasks, synchronize their actions and communicate with each other and their human commander—all by themselves.