Douglas A. Macgregor's Blog, page 4

BAE Systems, Forterra join forces for autonomous AMPV prototype

WASHINGTON — The US arm of British defense giant BAE Systems and Forterra, a company specializing in “driverless technology,” announced a partnership today to develop a prototype version of an Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle (AMPV) outfitted with autonomous capabilities by 2026. 

“This partnership isn’t about buzzwords — it’s about rolling up our sleeves and presenting tangible options that empower the Army to maintain its dominance on any battlefield against any current or emerging threat,” Bill Sheehy, Ground Maneuver product line director for BAE, said in a company release today. “Bringing together two of the best in both worlds — to include combat vehicle production and autonomous technology development — means we can move faster, think bigger, and give Soldiers the edge they deserve.”

Today’s announcement comes after BAE Systems launched a program last month to produce a number of “technologically advanced” AMPV prototypes rigged with “different capability kits” using the company’s internal investment funds, BAE announced at the time.

RELATED: Frustrations mount over Army’s Robotic Combat Vehicle autonomy, acquisition approach

In regards to Forterra’s responsibility of integrating autonomy into the vehicle, the company will harness its technology stack called AutoDrive, according to today’s announcement. AutoDrive is a suite of software and hardware capabilities that can be either retrofitted onto a platform or built in partnership with an original equipment manufacturer, Scott Sanders, chief growth officer at Forterra, told Breaking Defense in a recent interview. 

“The capability consists of high-performance safety-critical compute, sensors, communications, user interfaces and networking, so that you can give those commands to the robot from hopefully anywhere in the world, as long as you know the comms pathway and give the user feedback to know what those systems are doing and how they collaborate,” he said. 

“So what AutoDrive is doing is taking all that visual perception, fusing it into an environment that the algorithms can understand, and then creating those paths to operate, both from going from point A to point B, and also collaboratively with the other robots so that you have an effect on target,” he said.

Today’s announcement added that Forterra’s AutoDrive is “also compatible with other modern systems fighting in the U.S. Army’s Armored Brigade Combat Team today, including the Bradley A4 and the M109A7 Paladin Self-Propelled Howitzer.”

Last month the Army awarded three companies, including Forterra, contracts to test the viability of turning Infantry Support Vehicles (ISVs) into autonomous vehicles. However, last week, Breaking Defense confirmed that the Unmanned Systems (UxS) program may entail potentially removing the ISVs from the equation and instead letting industry bring in their own platforms to host the software, a senior defense official and an industry official said at the time. Further, the service may also invite new vendors into the competition, they said.

Space Force creates new intel ‘production’ unit

WASHINGTON — The Space Force has created a new Space Intelligence Production Center (SIPC) designed to streamline the flow of threat information both to warfighters for day-to-day operations and policymakers for longer-term strategic decisions, according to service officials.

The service cut the ribbon on the new center at the Springfield-Beckley Air National Guard Base, Springfield, Ohio, on Friday. The SIPC combines the 76th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Squadron (ISRS) from Space Force Delta 7, and the 4th Intelligence Analysis Squadron (IAS) from the National Space Intelligence Center (NSIC).

The move “will allow for more streamlining in integrating foundational and technical intelligence into current Military Space operations,” a Space Force spokesperson said in an email to reporters.

Lt. Col. Stefan Katz, the 76th ISRS commander, told reporters the day of the ceremony that the merger of the two units will benefit both sides, as well as future space operations.

“There’s a great symbiosis here,” he said. “The crews from the 76th are focused on today’s tasking, today’s situation, today’s mission and objectives, and the 4th [on] thinking longer term, and what are the implications.”

Katz explained that his squadron is “very junior,” made of personnel on their first assignment with the Space Force.

By contrast, the commander of the 4th IAS, Lt. Col. Aaron Echols, said that the 4th is made up of seasoned intelligence professionals working on data exploitation, including analysts specializing in integrated input from all types of sources, but also “single source experts.”

Echols said the new unit will look across intelligence “disciplines” — for example, geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) and signals intelligence (SIGINT) — “that is giving information from all over the place, any time, any day.

“Our uniformed Guardians and our civilian Guardians are looking at this from that space lens, that same information can be utilized by multitude of other services and combat commands, but really the purpose for our field is that space domain piece to it,” he said.

Katz added that the new center also “can help drive future force design based off of the knowledge that is we are using from literally dozens of different types of unique sensors across GEOINT, SIGINT, MASINT [measurement and signature intelligence], even OSINT [open source intelligence].

“No one will be better suited to explain to the acquisition community, ‘Hey, sensors XYZ: awesome. ABC: could be good, but they’re always broken. And then these three: would be better if the following’ — so we can drive that longer-term automation to make the different systems, current and yet to come, be more effective for both current operations and then the bigger picture analysis.”

While the SIPC now includes some 140 personnel, Echols said that over time “there will be more” as there already are plans for growth.

“The endgame is 150 or more person ops floor that probably is going to involve about a half dozen different organizations,” he said.

NATO needs accelerated counter-drone tech to fend off Russian incursions: Official

BELFAST — NATO’s fielding of counter-drone systems must be expediated so the threat of Russian drones violating alliance airspace can be better dealt with, according to a senior NATO official.

Counter-drone technology is “something we really have to field now, not in years,” Gen. Ingo Gerhartz, commander of NATO Allied Joint Force Command Brunssum, told the Warsaw Security Forum today. “It has to be fielded in months, in a multi-domain approach.”

He said NATO, the European Union and individual nations need to be a “bit faster” at acquiring counter drone systems.

Shooting down cheap drones that cost $2,000 to $3,000 with million-dollar missiles is neither effective nor sustainable, shared Gerhartz.

In the wake of Russia’s drone incursion into Poland, NATO launched Eastern Sentry to boost its air defenses across the Eastern Flank, chiefly through the deployment of British, Danish, French and German weapon systems.

“Putting more assets in there [Eastern flank] more fighters [combat jets] … gives us a good feeling,” said Gerhartz. “It signals that NATO and the countries can react. But we need other equipment, even more. We need low cost sensors. We need low cost effectors.”

In addition to flying drones over Poland, Moscow has done the same over Romania and has flown fighter jets over Estonia, moves that European officials have widely condemned.

In a joint statement today, the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Poland called the Russian actions “reckless, hostile acts.”

Signaling increased efforts on the continent to respond to drone threats, France, Germany and Sweden are among a number of countries that have agreed to supply Denmark with counter drone systems in order to enhance security for a European Council (EC) meeting in Copenhagen on Wednesday, the Danish Ministry of Defense announced today.

The allied support follows on from Denmark temporarily banning civilian drone flights over its airspace after a series of drone sightings and related incidents involving the Nordic nation’s military bases and local airports.

When asked, Gerhartz said that it would be for “someone” from Denmark to determine if “capacities” were in place to “secure” Copenhagen, ahead of the forthcoming EC summit, but from a “NATO perspective” the alliance is ready to defend against future Russian incursions involving “missiles or aircraft or whatever.”

Responding to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s assessment from July that the alliance requires a 400 percent increase in its air and missile defense capabilities, Gerhartz said the figure could be met “very soon” and it “doesn’t matter” if NATO members decide to buy different air defense systems, so long as the platforms can be integrated.

Speaking alongside Gerhartz in Warsaw, Ben Hodges, former Commander of US Army Europe, said that NATO has not “mentally prepared” for daily Russian drone strikes involving “hundreds” of aircraft. “We absolutely have not exercised for that,” he added. “Think about 10,000 American troops in Poland and the Russians are willing to launch 21 drones into Poland. That tells you they are not concerned [or] that we were actually going to do anything about it.”

AI will make drone threats a nightmare – it could also save us

Imagine you’re standing watch on a military base’s security forces team, monitoring for potential air threats. Your radar screen is cluttered with tracks – commercial aircraft, flocks of birds, and civilian and commercial drones. You see what looks like a small aircraft veering towards your fence line.

Is that a threat? A delivery drone flying off course? A hobbyist drone operator snapping a picture of a sunset? Or is it an AI-trained distraction while the real threat masks its approach from another direction? 

Drones already present a formidable challenge for military and homeland security forces. AI-guided drones could be a nightmare, using advanced tactics to hide their movements or coordinate swarming attacks custom-designed to overwhelm defenses. 

The good news? AI is uniquely suited to powering exceptional drone defenses. Here’s how: 

Learning algorithms are excellent at spotting and tracking drones: In a noisy or cluttered radar environment, drones could slip through cracks in sensor detection. But AI can be trained specifically to separate signal from noise in a given environment. 

An AI-powered system can become an expert in the area around a military base, for example, learning the local landscape, structures, and even weather patterns so it knows how to pick out and track drone anomalies with exceptional accuracy. 

AI can match defensive weapons to drone targets much faster than humans: Once the drone is spotted, a counter-UAS system has to know how to best determine intent and to plan for mitigation. But that depends on many complex factors. Is the drone carrying explosives? Is it vulnerable to a cyber or electronic attack? Could a laser take it down safely? 

For operators in a command center, making those decisions from a dozen or so football fields away can cost precious minutes. But an AI algorithm can be trained to recognize and evaluate different drone threats in an instant, evaluating its weaknesses and capabilities to quickly find and recommend the best way to maintain safety and sovereignty. It can also be trained on policy and rules of engagement to know which responses best align to regulations, assisting operators in a complex data rich environment. 

AI might be the only way to move fast enough to repel a drone swarm: In a large swarm scenario, human operators can be quickly overwhelmed. A well-trained AI system, governed by robust safety protocols, could take over defenses, rapidly prioritizing and engaging drones to stave off a powerful assault. Such a defense would require layering offensive and defensive tactics, a feat only an AI-powered system could likely pull off. 

Image courtesy of Lockheed Martin.

Building an Intelligent Counter-UAS Network

Sanctum™, Lockheed Martin’s Counter-UAS system, is proving out those AI-driven capabilities in joint exercises worldwide. From precision tracking and targeting to real-world takedowns of drone threats, Sanctum is demonstrating the power of smart, layered defense. 

Sanctum is customized for each deployment, using a combination of layered defensive systems and a core AI mission management system that is trained to detect drones in cluttered environments, track them with confidence, and identify the level of threat they pose. The system then recommends the ideal weapon-target pairing to take them out quickly and safely. 

Sanctum’s AI is a learning algorithm. What Sanctum sees in one location trains the system everywhere. When Sanctum tracks a new threat or recognizes a different UAS behavior, it shares those updates across the network. That makes each node smarter, and helps keep Sanctum-equipped defenses ahead of the threat.

That software is built on the same Lockheed Martin-designed air and missile defense technology like the Aegis Combat System that’s countering drone and cruise missile threats in places like the Red Sea. From sensors and sensor fusion to automated weapon-target pairing and precision intercepts, these technologies are battle-tested, not just beta-tested. 

We combine that AI mission management brain with a mix of the top-performing sensors and effectors from across the commercial and defense tech industry. Sanctum’s open architecture means there’s no vendor lock and no requirement to use Lockheed Martin tech. Each defensive network is built for what the mission needs, from software to sensors to shooters. And as new innovations come online, Sanctum can integrate new tech with ease. 

The result is a system that’s custom-designed and diligently trained to defend each unique location. That delivers more effective security, with better chances of seeing and stopping drones in their tracks without risking the safety of a base or the surrounding area. 

Sanctum gives operators a decisive edge over a rapidly evolving drone threat. 

Paul Lemmo is the Vice President and General Manager of Integrated Warfare Systems and Sensors at Lockheed Martin.

Northrop Grumman’s partners tout AI software, from AR training to mission planning

WASHINGTON — Northrop Grumman’s AI testbed aircraft is back in the air, and at least half-a-dozen partner companies are readying their autonomy software to install on it. The partners’ software modules range from an augmented reality training system to tactical combat algorithms and even mission planning and analysis, executives from each company told reporters last week at the Air Force Association‘s conference.

The physical centerpiece of the program, the Scaled Composites Model 437 Vanguard jet, took off Sept. 20 for the first time in roughly a year. Most of that time was spent installing Northrop Grumman’s Prism autonomy package, which is designed not only to fly the aircraft but also to accept specialized software modules from any company that conforms to certain common technical standards.

So far, six companies — Red 6, Autonodyne, EpiSci, Merlin Labs, Soar Technology and Shield AI — have publicly announced their participation in Northrop’s flight test program, known overall as Beacon. Beacon includes the Vanguard aircraft, its Prism software, and assorted support systems on the ground.

Red 6 specializes in augmented-reality training for military pilots. Their software populates the real skies with virtual aircraft that a real plane can interact with, both as friends and foes. The Red 6 tech superimposes VR aircraft on the pilot’s field of vision — and feeds realistic data about these unreal planes to the real aircraft’s sensors. That allows a single pilot in a single aircraft to train in scenarios too complex, too expensive, or just too dangerous to try out in real life.

“You can define the terrain, you define the threat, you can define the friendly forces, the electromagnetic spectrum,” said Red 6 Chief Strategy Officer Kevin Fesler, a former Air Force fighter group commander.

Autonodyne is also bringing the ability for the real aircraft to interact with multiple virtual ones. But its software’s initial focus is on coordinating the maneuvers of that entire formation, both its physical and digital elements, “in a tactically optimal way,” said CEO Steve Jacobson.

EpiSci, which was acquired earlier this year by Applied Intuition, is offering autonomy software with a focus on human-machine teaming — the art and science of getting AI and people to work together effectively.

“Getting the reps and sets with human pilots is something that we are very interested in doing,” said EpiSci President Dan Javorsek, a former Air Force squadron commander himself.

Merlin Labs is working with Northrop Grumman’s Beacon program to test “a package of mission autonomy behaviors,” said Merlin General Manager for Tactical Autonomy Chris Gentile. That means Merlin’s tactical algorithms will take in sensor data from the aircraft about its internal functioning and external conditions — augmented, on occasion, by Red 6’s synthetic data about simulated threats and allies — and then tell the aircraft how to react.

“We’re going to show that we can use that to make dynamic, highly effective human or superhuman decisions,” Gentile said.

Soar Technology focuses on “collaborative autonomy,” the ability of multiple systems — both manned and unmanned — to work together towards a common mission. The specific software module they’re bringing to Beacon, said Vice President for Autonomy Jack Zaientz, enables the aircraft to conduct what’s called a Combat Air Patrol. A CAP is a standardized but complex set of actions that requires multiple aircraft to coordinate their movements, get on station, patrol their assigned area, and keep their radars properly aimed to detect incoming threats.

Shield AI is delivering software that can learn and adapt over multiple autonomous missions, said Chief Strategy Officer Ryan Tseng. Its algorithms help the aircraft carry out its mission in flight, he explained, but they also help plan the mission before takeoff and analyze the outcome afterwards, potentially even updating the software and tactics before taking off on the next mission.

“Our focus is … the ability to exercise the full lifecycle of autonomy — from the mission plans, through the mission execution, through the debrief and the learning,” Tseng said.

The Vanguard aircraft still needs a few more test flights before it starts trying out all the partner software, cautioned Northrop President of Aeronautics Tom Jones. The Sept. 20 flight had the full Prism package up and running, he said, but not in control — that was still in the hands of a human test pilot. The company has five more such test flights before it flips the switch and lets Prism take full control, which should happen by the end of the year.

Then, once Prism is thoroughly proven, the partners can start plugging their software into it for flight tests. The plan is for multiple partners’ modules to be running at the same time during the same flight, executives said, allowing for complex interactions that are more than the sum of the individual parts.

Why Anduril, RTX are pushing new ground-launched munition variants

WASHINGTON — Defense contractors Anduril and RTX both unveiled ground-launched versions of existing munitions at the AFA conference outside Washington last week, pointing to growing market demand for the weapons amid trials on the modern battlefield.  

Some of that demand is coming from the US government. Just one day after the conference ended, the Republican majority for the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday praised Anduril’s offering in particular, pledging that a dedicated military program would procure the new capability.

“There is currently no program for these types of missiles, but there will be soon,” the Republican SASC account posted on X, adding that $25 million set aside in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill will “accelerate development” of the class of weapons.

Anduril announced at the AFA conference that it is updating the company’s Barracuda-500 cruise missile to launch from the ground. When the Barracuda-500’s air-launched version was announced last year, the company said the weapon could offer a range over 500 nautical miles and carry more than 100 pounds of payload. 

“Over the past several months, it’s been very clear that the priority” for Pentagon and congressional leadership “is fixing our munitions gap,” Diem Salmon, Anduril’s vice president for Air Dominance and Strike, said in a briefing with reporters Tuesday. “I think this has picked up actually in terms of prioritization and focus recently, and the desire is to finally fix what has been a problem in our missile inventory that’s decades old at this point.”

RTX subsidiary Raytheon also adapted one of its own existing munitions for a surface-launched role and unveiled it at AFA: the GBU-53/B StormBreaker, also known as the 250-pound class Small Diameter Bomb II, that can be launched from Air Force and Navy aircraft. 

“Recent global conflicts have highlighted the need for a smart, ground-launched, precision strike weapon that can perform in GPS-contested areas,” Sam Deneke, Raytheon’s president of Air & Space Defense Systems, said in a company press release published on Wednesday. “StormBreaker is a composable weapon, which allows it to be customized to meet mission demands. Using the foundational components of air-launched StormBreaker allowed us to move faster than ever before, going from concept to test flight in under two months.”

The Pentagon and foreign customers have shown keen interest in the StormBreaker. For example, an Air Force notice published last year that outlined a plan for the next dozen production lots set an annual manufacturing rate target of up to 2,240 units.

The war in Ukraine in particular has highlighted the need for various munitions, and modes of launching them, that can strike long-distance targets. Ukrainian defense firm Fire Point, for example, recently unveiled a ground-launched cruise missile called Flamingo that can carry a roughly 2,500-pound warhead and travel over 1,800 miles. 

Steve Milano, Anduril’s senior director for advanced effects, said alongside Salmon in the Tuesday briefing that the company is poised to manufacture thousands of Barracuda-500s as early as next year, cautioning that “demand needs to solidify for us to make the investments that are necessary.”

A key opportunity, according to Milano, is the Air Force’s new Family of Affordable Mass Missiles program, which fiscal 2026 budget documents showed a desire to buy approximately 3,000 units using One Big Beautiful Bill funds, otherwise known as reconciliation. Beyond the Pentagon, Milano said that there’s “a lot” of demand from international customers, leading to co-development agreements like one underway with Taiwan.

Pentagon readies contingency plans for government shutdown

WASHINGTON — With less than two days left before the US government potentially shuts down, the Department of Defense has issued contingency guidance to the force outlining six priorities and contracting plans.

“Activities that are determined not to be excepted, and which cannot be performed by utilizing military personnel in place of furloughed civilian personnel, will be suspended when appropriated funds are no longer available,” the document said. The secretary of defense “may, at any time, determine that additional activities shall be treated as excepted,” it added.

Fiscal 2025 is sunsetting when the clock strikes midnight Wednesday. Congress has not yet approved FY26 spending bills, and Democrats and Republicans have not reached an agreement on a continuing resolution to keep the government open. If a stopgap measure is not approved by both chambers and signed by President Donald Trump, the federal government will shut down.

For DoD, that means that military personnel on active duty — including reserve component personnel on federal active duty — will continue reporting for duty and may be asked to carry out non-excepted activities normally done by civilian personnel that have been furloughed.

“Civilian personnel, including military technicians, who are not necessary to carry out or support excepted activities, are to be furloughed using lapse in appropriations (often referred to as ‘shutdown’) procedures and guidance provided by the Office of Personnel Management,” the Pentagon guidance said. “Only the minimum number of civilian employees necessary to carry out excepted activities will be excepted from furlough.”

The department’s “highest priorities,” according to the guidance, will revolve around operations securing the US Southern border, operations in the Middle East, designing Golden Dome, depot maintenance, shipbuilding and critical munitions.

“As in every case, efforts supporting these activities may occur during a lapse when resourced with funds that remain available,” the planning guidance said.

“Where costs for such efforts must be charged against a lapsed appropriation, Component and subordinate leaders will closely evaluate individual activities to determine whether they are ‘excepted’ consistent with this planning guidance and continue or initiate them, as appropriate, when supported by the facts,” the document later added. 

When it comes to work on big-ticket weapons programs, contractors are able to continue working on previously awarded deals. However, the department is not allowed to execute new contracts.

“The expiration of an appropriation does not require the termination of contracts (or issuance of stop work orders) funded by that appropriation unless a new obligation of funds is required under the contract and the contract is not required to support an excepted activity,” the guidance continues.

The latest from EDGE Group and an interview with Aselsan’s CEO: Middle East Defense Digest [Video]

What’s the fallout from Israel’s attack on Qatar? What’s EDGE Group up to? And what does the CEO of Aselsan think about the Middle Eastern defense market?

All those answers and more await you in this month’s edition of the Middle East Defense Digest hosted by Agnes Helou.

For more regional news, make sure to subscribe to our Middle East newsletter.

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Pentagon, Sikorsky ink $10 billion deal for 99 CH-53K heavy lift helos

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has awarded Sikorsky a multi-year contract valued up to $10.8 billion to build a maximum of 99 CH-53K King Stallion helicopters for the Marine Corps and international partners, the first multi-year contract of its kind for the program of record.

In all, the Pentagon is currently planning to buy 200 CH-53Ks, meaning the new multi-year deal represents roughly half of the entire program. The five-year deal is estimated to provide $1.5 billion in savings from 2025 to 2029, according to a statement from Naval Air Systems Command on Friday.

“This multi-year procurement is key to mitigating program costs,” said Col. Kate Fleeger, program manager for the CH-53K. “The contract allows Sikorsky to take advantage of a long-term, stable demand signal and bundle purchase orders from suppliers to achieve better pricing. That savings is then passed on to the government.”

The CH-53K is the Marine Corps’ heavy lift helicopter slated to replace its legacy CH-53E Super Stallions. The newer aircraft is capable of lifting three times the weight of its predecessor and is designed to move troops, supplies and heavy equipment across the battlefield.

“This award reflects trust and confidence in Sikorsky to deliver these technologically advanced, heavy-lift helicopters that will revolutionize the Marine Corps’ operational capabilities by adding unrivaled power, performance, survivability and dependability to the fleet,” said Rich Benton, Sikorsky vice president and general manager. “The multi-year contract enables Sikorsky to partner with the Department of the Navy to drive long-term affordability, optimize production efficiencies and stabilize our supply chain and workforce, ensuring the Marines maintain the strategic advantage with the CH-53K in a rapidly evolving battlespace.”   

To date, Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin subsidiary, has delivered 20 helicopters to the Marine Corps with an additional 63 aircraft in various states of production. The King Stallion’s first Marine Expeditionary Unit deployment is scheduled for fiscal 2027, according to NAVAIR.

Additionally, Sikorsky is under contract to deliver 12 CH-53Ks to Israel.

“The contract combines five separate aircraft orders — defined as Lots 9-13 — into a five-year multi-year procurement, ensuring price predictability and consistent flow of materials from 267 CH-53K suppliers across 37 states, and 17 suppliers from eight countries,” according to Sikorsky. “The contract allows the U.S. Government to buy up to 99 CH-53K aircraft for the Marine Corps or to fulfill orders from international military customers.”

Data overload threatens decisionmakers as autonomy expands

Warfighters need complete confidence and trust in autonomous systems before fully adopting them, as they will increasingly rely on these systems to take over critical tasks and responsibilities. That means the design and usability of systems, such as those that control ground robots and autonomous vessels, must avoid becoming more complex over time and instead move toward simplifying decision-making for warfighter engagements.

Breaking Defense asked Tim Heiser, director of defense programs at Teague — a U.S.-based firm with nearly a century of human-centered design expertise — to discuss how this issue is being addressed today.

Breaking Defense: What are the warfighter challenges associated with introducing autonomous capabilities/technologies in complex environments?

Tim Heiser is director of defense programs at Teague. 

Heiser: New solutions are being offered and fielded every day; the pace can be overwhelming. Warfighters are trained for precise tasks, where the cause and effect of their actions is clear. Handing off responsibility to a system, especially one they don’t fully understand, is no small step. Industry also has to remember to not take it lightly. Warfighters serve out of pride in their work, and they need full confidence in every action they take — whether involving another person or a machine.

That personal need for confidence is colliding with a technical reality: The amount of data coming in now is more than any human can process at the speed decisions have to be made. That forces us to really think about how information is segmented and about the risk of cognitive overload. On top of that, a lot of the systems in use today were built decades ago. Yes, they’ve been modernized over the years, but at some point adding more doesn’t make them better, it just makes them harder to use. That’s the point where you have to step back and ask: how can a human-machine engagement and autonomy for tasks that have a reasonable expectation of trust, be taken off the plate of those folks so they can make decisions in complex and high-stress environments?

We have to keep the usability of that tech in mind and create an environment of trust first and foremost for that to be fully adopted and deployed. That’s got to be the North Star before industry.

What specific areas of technology does this apply to?

Everything from seabed to space: air vehicles, kinetic and non-kinetic responses, and ground control stations for command and control of sea, air, and space systems, to name a few.

For example, I see a lot of emphasis lately in the marine world. The statistics on our shipbuilding capacity versus adversaries are pretty stark. In response, we are starting to see more seed funding go to autonomous tech that’s going to help rebuild our industrial base, and maritime defense is certainly getting some much-needed attention.  

This is a growing opportunity, but the focus is still the same: How do you field capability that’s going to allow people to do more in a manner in which they’re not going to control everything tomorrow that they control today? Again, it doesn’t matter if it’s a satellite or an undersea vessel, the question is: Do we fully understand what that mission is intended to do, and does the system present itself in such a way that it makes sense to the person who needs to execute that mission?

One of the ways to make this possible is through design. What does design mean to Teague in this context?

I’ll talk about it in the context of intuitiveness and usability. When I think about good design, it is first rooted in user research, very solid research. Do you understand the problem you’re trying to solve, the environment you’re trying to deploy a certain solution in? And do you understand how people are going to use that product, whether it’s digital or physical?

That involves not only understanding what people tell you that they do, but it’s the observations of how they do the work. When starting at the user-research level and observing how warfighters do their tasks, the nonverbals tell you as much as the verbals. You look at the sticky notes, you look at the shortcuts that they’ve developed for themselves over the years because they’ve trained themselves to do things in the most effective manner. The manuals and three-inch binders that they use certainly don’t always keep up with that.

Then you take that written and observed knowledge and put it into a plan that turns discovery into a definition, turning that into a developed opportunity, and then delivering on that opportunity. In the design industry, we call it the Double Diamond process, which forms the foundation of what we do and how we do it from a design perspective.

Ultimately, it always comes back to the mission, and asking: What is it, how will it be fulfilled, and does the product make sense from a usability standpoint? If you start with that, then the ‘design’ starts to follow the function that you’re trying to deploy.

The real issue is that things are becoming much more complex and being able to visualize that design before significant investments are made is money well spent, not only in the near term, but for what we have to have as an output.

Capt. Adam Rodriguez, the exercise platoon leader assigned to Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 29th Infantry Regiment, receives additional guidance for using his tablet during the final exercise of the 10X Dismounted Infantry Platoon Project at Fort Moore, Georgia Sept. 20. 10X is led by the U.S. Army DEVCOM Ground Vehicle Systems Center in partnership with Fort Moore’s Robotics Requirements Division, the Maneuver Battle Lab, and the National Advanced Mobility Consortium, and is using a robotic system of systems integrated with an infantry platoon to enhance maneuver, situational awareness, and operational effectiveness (U.S. Army photo by Chris Estrada).

Give us a couple use cases about how design has made a difference in development and acceptance of an autonomous capability.

I’ll start by giving you a digital example — something that transcends the seabed-to-space-type application around ground control stations and command and control (C2). A lot of these systems have been around for a long time. Certainly, there are new ones being born every year, but a lot of systems are tried and true. They’re certified, they’ve gone through all their qualifications, and that’s an investment that does take time and no one wants to repeat.

Yet the engagement of those systems is looking to be modernized. For example, we’re asking people to use an iPhone on weekends and then on Monday come into work and manage a command and control system that at times is still based on a green screen design. That’s not effective. Systems that used to track 1, 5, 10 assets now need to track 100, 500, 1,000 assets. The solution can’t be to continue to bolt on more and more capability. What we’ve seen is the decision string, the amount of checks and balances and clicks of a mouse, let’s say, to determine engagement or not, is starting to lengthen.

And all of that complexity shows up in front of the warfighter. They want to feel confident in the information they’re looking at. What we’ve found is that design can help by triaging that information: what’s critical to understand right now versus what can be moved to on-the-loop or out-of-the-loop and used later for mission planning two, three, four days down the road.

In interviews, warfighters have told us: “I had so much information in front of me, I couldn’t make a decision.” In some cases, they unconsciously chose not to engage because they couldn’t get through the decision wheel fast enough. In a recent UI project, we simplified incoming information using color, iconography, and menu design to create a cleaner system. The result was a simpler interface that allowed faster, clearer decisions.

There has also been tremendous effort invested in developing autonomous navigation and operational systems for ground vehicles. From an engineering standpoint, these technologies are essential to ensure vehicles perform their required functions and make mission-critical decisions. But how humans engage with those systems — through the interface — is where good design can elevate the technology, transforming it from simply functional to truly effective.

The ability to mission plan, alter decisions mid-mission, and coordinate with other assets in the field is a complex process that requires information to be presented in a clear and meaningful way. These decisions will often fall to young warfighters in high-stress situations, who need confidence that the information they see is accurate and that the choices they make won’t be second-guessed later. Our job in design is to ensure that information is delivered clearly, concisely, and in a way that supports the mission. In autonomous vehicle command, control, and navigation, we’ve seen significant opportunities for design to elevate technical systems into tools that enable their users.

You mentioned the importance of speed-to-trust for autonomous technology. Tell us more.

This shows up in two ways. First, within industry — the men and women on the factory floor who will use this technology to build production systems that increase output. As demand grows to meet the needs of our warfighters, autonomy will become integral to our factories and supply chains. Those who think carefully about how technology integrates with the workforce will be far better positioned to meet these rising demands.

The second area is within the DoD. When industry introduces new technology or products that can be fielded in months rather than years, it’s possible because we’ve already addressed usability, scalability, maintainability, and trainability across the product lifecycle. We’re no longer thinking in decades — we’re thinking in operational timelines. 

Great technology is here now and proliferating faster than ever, which is a good thing. It’s an exciting moment to be in the middle of so much demand and integration of new capabilities. But ultimately, it’s the way these systems are designed — with the user in mind — that drives adoption, impact, and mission success.

To learn how human-centered design turns autonomy into capability, download Teague’s guide: Designing the Future Force.