The Right Way to Get to Human-Machine Integration. (EMERGING TECHNOLOGY HORIZONS)

• Date: 01 February 2025
• Author: Dooley, Matthew,Miles, Wilson,Dooley, Matthew^Miles, Wilson
• Published date: 01 February 2025

The Army wants robotic combat vehicles and other robotic platforms capable of keeping pace and fighting with both infantry and armored brigade combat teams.

As part of its human-machine integrated formations initiative, the service is thinking through how to effectively fuse humans and machines and drive toward its vision of a future where one soldier controls many robotic platforms performing a variety of missions.

The initiative began in 2023 to meet Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth's goal of having "no blood for first contact" and to accelerate the Army's understanding of the optimal combination of humans and machines in combat.

The war in Ukraine provides one lens into the viability of combined arms maneuver warfare using robotic assets, which is helping define how uncrewed systems will best provide maneuver formations with warfighting advantages over peer threats. Not all lessons directly apply, but the iterative nature of robotic evolution in this war is helpful in refining the Army's approach.

For example, the tandem cooperative behavior between strike unmanned aerial vehicles and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets enables commanders to quickly observe, identify, attack and dismantle the enemy.

There are layers of systems working together in an...