Air Force Research Lab tries to stay ahead of rivals.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: R & D SPECIAL REPORT

* The Air Force sees a world that is catching up with it in terms of technology.

The service "is facing conditions that diverge significantly from the strategic environment of the past two decades," the Air Force Research Laboratory's 2014 Strategic Plan stated. "Potential adversaries are using emergent globalized technology and manufacturing infrastructure to rapidly develop sophisticated military capabilities that create more contested operational environments."

The AFRL has a list of what it calls five "game changers" that will help maintain the Air Force's reputation of creating cutting edge technologies. They are: autonomy, hypersonics, unmanned systems, nanotechnology and directed energy.

Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski, commander of the Air Force Material Command, when asked to list her top research and development priorities at a recent trade show, said: "Autonomy, directed energy and hypersonics because I believe that all three of those can get us to that strategic agility. Those three are critically important."

Autonomy can take many forms. Pawlikowski during a speech at the 2015 Air Force Association conference highlighted small drones that can independently swarm at a target and serve as substitutes for expensive munitions.

When launching a missile from an aircraft, the weapon is on its own before reaching the target, she noted.

"When we separate the weapon from the aircraft, we separate the weapon from the human," she said. A swarm of small unmanned aerial vehicles carrying small munitions can be launched at a target. The dispersed swarm would not only be harder to defeat, a controller could continue to communicate with the horde as it approaches, thus keeping a human in the loop for a longer period, she noted.

Autonomy remains key here. One airman must be able to control the whole swarm.

"We can't have swarms of airmen because it won't be cost effective," she said.

"We believe it can be very much a game-changing reality for our Air Force in the future," Pawlikowski added.

Unmanned aerial systems have now been an integral part of the Air Force for more than a decade. But research-and-development opportunities abound as the service seeks to improve its capabilities and look to anti-access scenarios where they are hard to protect.

Col. Joel Luker, acting director of the aerospace systems directorate at the Air Force Research Laboratory, said, "Our long-term goal is to make unmanned systems an option for the broadest set of Air Force...