Defense Department Struggles to Define Autonomy.

• Author: Chesebrough, Dave
• Position: Viewpoint

Defense Secretary James Mattis' National Defense Strategy maintains that the security environment is directly affected by rapid technological advancements driven by commercial technology, and this has fundamentally changed the character of war.

The strategy specifically identifies autonomy as one of these technologies. We hear a lot today about self-driving cars. Recent fatal accidents in Arizona and California have ignited a debate about the operational efficacy and safety of autonomous vehicles, even with human backup. John Paul MacDuffie, director of program and vehicle mobility at the Wharton School's Institute for Innovation Management, offers the observation that we are in the early days of the evolution of driverless technology, and accidents are to be expected.

In the automotive world driverless vehicle testing must be conducted on public roads in real-world conditions to prove out the technology. But that involves the general population in the risk pool for what is essentially the test and evaluation of these robotic vehicles. When accidents happen, innocent people not connected with the testing can be the victims. Arizona suspended Uber driverless car testing after a fatal accident involving a pedestrian.

What is the analogy for military systems, which must be evaluated under operational conditions, and which may carry lethal weapons and need to participate in combined arms units? There are complicated questions surrounding integration of autonomous systems into operational forces and how they are tested and evaluated to assure both safety and effectiveness.

At the National Defense Industrial Association's Ground Robotics Capabilities Conference and Expo this year there was a heavy emphasis on the Army's 2017 Robotics and Autonomy Strategy and the integration of autonomous robots into operational forces.

Robots have been a subject of science fiction since the genre was invented. We tend to project onto these fictional machines human-like abilities--we like to think they will behave as we do. But the reality is that there are many levels of autonomous capabilities and integrating these into a military force is complex, and is being intensely examined by the defense community.

When a fully autonomous vehicle is deployed in a combined arms operation it has to perform and respond as a vehicle with a human operator would. That means it must conform to the established tactics, procedures and tasks while also being capable of coordinated...