This week on Weapons and Warfare, the team met with a company taking AI pilots out of the cockpit and putting them into the captain’s chair. Host Ryan Robertson takes a look at EpiSci’s most recent effort to plug and play its AI into multiple platforms.
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Also featured in this episode:
- North Korea tests new loitering drones.
- Another American aircraft carrier is deployed to the Middle East.
- History is made on NATO AWACS.
- Weapon of the Week: the Army tests out a multi-functional reconnaissance company.
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Editor’s Note: A previous version of the above video stated that Merlin acquired EpiSci in June. While the parties reached an agreement in June, the acquisition was not finalized. Straight Arrow News deeply regrets the error.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
Hello and welcome to Weapons and Warfare. For Straight Arrow News, I am your host Ryan Robertson. Just ahead on this week’s episode…
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
Taking the AI pilot to the next level. We check in with one of the leaders in artificial intelligence to see how they are working to make their tech interchangeable and adaptable to several different military platforms.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
And we head out to the field to see how one aspect of the Army’s vision for the future of combat is coming together just months after it was created.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
But first, some headlines you may have missed.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
With news cycles dominated by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as China keeping everyone on edge in the South China Sea, North Korea must be feeling a little left out.
So, in late August, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised a demonstration of some new attack drones. State media says the dictator pledged to increase the development of such weapons to boost his military’s war readiness.
Amid growing tensions with Washington and Seoul, Kim has been flaunting his military capabilities.
North Korean photos of the test showed what is believed to be a loitering drone crashing into and destroying a target resembling South Korea’s K-2 main battle tank.
The test came as the U.S. and South Korean militaries are conducting a large-scale exercise aimed at enhancing their combined capabilities to defend against growing North Korean nuclear threats.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group is now operating in the U.S. Central Command’s area of operations, joining the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group.
In August, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered the Lincoln to accelerate its deployment in response to Iranian officials threatening strikes on Israel.
At a Pentagon press conference, Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said the forces are well positioned to counter any attack from Iran or Iranian-backed proxies.
[SABRINA SINGH]
We remain focused on efforts to de-escalate tensions in the region, and while also remaining focused on securing a ceasefire as part of a hostage deal, to bring all of the hostages home and to end the war in Gaza.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
An Air Force F-22 Raptor squadron is also operating in the region, and the USS Georgia — a cruise missile submarine — is operating nearby.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
Another barrier broken. This time at 30,000 feet. A NATO AWACS aircraft recently flew with its first all-female crew over NATO’s eastern flank as part of a routine enhanced vigilance flight.
[UNNAMED SPEAKER]
Typically in a crew of 30, I am typically the only or one of two or three females. This is an amazing feat to be able to see NATO have an entire crew, full appointment. We have come a long way. Even in the past 15 years, when I first started flying with NATO, there were crew positions that were missing because we just did not have female, for instance, flight engineers here. Now we can fill every single seat with a woman, and it is just a neat opportunity to be able to say, Hey, this is all women, and I am very proud of it.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
The mission featured 22 servicewomen from Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, and the U.S.
[TRANSITION]
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
If you are a fan of the show, you probably heard us talk before about EpiSci, a software development firm out of Southern California. It has been a big year for the startup.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
In May, it was part of an effort that put Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall in the cockpit of an AI-piloted F-16 for a capabilities demonstration. And in June, it was acquired by Merlin, a Boston-based company also working in the AI agent arena.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
And recently, the tech wizards took part in ‘Silent Swarm 2024,’ where they took their AI pilot out of the air and put it into the captain’s seat on the water at the Alpena Combat Readiness Center in Michigan.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
The annual exercise featured around 60 technologies and more than 500 participants. For EpiSci, it was a chance to test the capabilities of its tech in a contested environment. In coach-speak, it was essentially offense against defense in a maritime battlespace.
[JOSH BLOOM]
Having the ability to really scale up to, you know, six boats at Silent Swarm, we’ve since scaled up to 10 boats in testing, and they’ve done this in a matter of, like, six months, they’ve gone from no boats all the way to being able to manufacture they’ve got 15 right now. So just getting out on the water and actually testing in these kind of realistic environments is something that really hasn’t been done before this.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
The exercise highlighted the abilities of the team’s cross-domain collaborative autonomy technology. Think of it as plug and play. Taking their AI out of a jet and running it on six HAVOC-AI Rampage USVs. Using a single command and control operator to carry out the mission.
[JOSH BLOOM]
That’s really what the algorithms have been developed for, and they’re built in such a way that a C2 operator only has to interface with one of these boats in order to interface with the entire swarm. So we have message passing that will take a single operator command and distribute it to the rest of the swarm.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
EpiSci’s founder, president, and CEO, Bo Ryu, says working on the water, rather than in the air, provides a very practical means to grow their efforts.
[BO RYU]
Maritime is actually accelerating a lot faster, obviously, because aircraft are very hard to modify and add something new without certification. Experimentally, we are doing really well, but we’ll see how fast it comes down. But in the water, it’s a very different ball game when it comes to speed and scale.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
As the Department of Defense continued to reshape its forces for potential conflicts with near-peer adversaries, speed and scale remained at the top of the list when it came to bolstering America’s defense efforts. EpiSci saw having that plug-and-play functionality as a driver in getting its technology into the hands of the people who needed it.
[BO RYU]
They cannot deal with 10 different autonomy solutions; it’s just a nightmare. The government has a very clear goal: can they find a vendor with a technology solution that can rapidly adapt to a new platform without waiting for six months? Can we do it in two weeks? Four weeks? One week? When they change it, that’s really what our team started demonstrating.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
While integration with multiple platforms remained an overarching goal of EpiSci, Ryu acknowledged there was another learning curve that needed to happen to truly bring this technology to the fight: the human aspect.
[BO RYU]
Military leadership should not think of using autonomous vehicles the same way they would with an experienced warfighter in the driver’s seat. It is going to take a recalibration of risk assessment to meet specific objectives, as threats can now be addressed in ways they never could with lives at stake.
[TRANSITION]
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
Normally in our Weapon of the Week, we take a look at new hardware. We have covered everything from drones to tanks to amphibious combat vehicles.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
But today we are looking at a concept. Specifically, the Army’s Multi-Functional Reconnaissance Company, or MFRC.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
Even though the war in Ukraine is still very much an active conflict, the lessons being learned are changing the way American military leadership views the future of combat.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
Lighter, more lethal units, equipped with state-of-the-art technology, are seen as the way forward. MFRCs, like this one with the 101st Airborne Division, are part of the Army’s most significant transformation in more than 40 years.
This elite recon unit now has access to drones and a host of combat-ready tech, all designed to keep an eye on the enemy while staying safely concealed.
[CAPT. CHARLES O’HAGAN]
We have been tasked with being painfully light and disproportionately lethal in order to sense, kill, and protect on behalf of the brigade.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
It is a marked shift from focusing on counterterrorism operations to equipping units to deter enemy forces and take advantage of current technology and warfighting trends.
As constructed, a Multi-Functional Recon Company consists of three “hunter-killer” platoons.
One to handle drones.
Another for electronic warfare.
And a third to handle robotics and autonomous systems.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
Of course, once airborne troops are on the ground, they need a way to get where they are going. Enter the Army’s Infantry Squad Vehicle, essentially a stripped-down version of the Chevy Colorado. Light enough to navigate rough terrain, but big enough to store enough supplies to sustain a recon team for several days.
Established in March, the MFRC has already taken part in two large-scale field training exercises. The first at Fort Campbell, Kentucky in April. And most recently at Fort Johnson in Louisiana.
[TRANSITION]
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
Time now for Comms Check and like our Debrief, it is a check-in with a Weapons and Warfare regular, Shield AI.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
In August, the arms and artificial intelligence technology startup successfully demonstrated its AI pilot, Hivemind, with two interacting Kratos Firejets accompanied by two chase jets. They say it paves the way for the seamless integration of manned and unmanned aircraft, a big step towards development for the future of air combat.
The flight tests, without any in-flight human intervention, featured two autonomous jets piloted by Hivemind, flying in formation and teaming up to perform real-time tactical maneuvers.
[BOBBY HOLTZNER]
I love seeing the lag maneuver in the tests, right? So, coming into the line of breast. Once they actually achieved that line of breast, you notice that the agent on the left was a little bit out in front. So what it performed was a lag maneuver, which is using geometry to essentially swing out wide and let the second fire jet catch up. I think that is some really, really cool autonomy.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
While the test featured two jets, Shield AI’s co-founder and president Brandon Tseng says the algorithm can handle much larger numbers. Something that is sure to catch the eye of the people spearheading the Replicator Initiative. The DoD’s plan to field thousands of autonomous systems, like uncrewed aircraft and underwater drones, in an effort to stay ahead of China’s ongoing military buildup.
[TRANSITION]
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
Well, we are just about out of time for this week’s Weapons and Warfare. If you like the show and want to help us grow, do us a favor and like and subscribe to our social feeds. We would love to hear from you as well, so go ahead and send us an email to Weapons and Warfare at SAN dot com.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
To wrap things up this week, I am going to speak on the importance of names and origin stories.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
Now, like many men my age, and much to the dismay of our parents, I am a big fan of comics—the books, the shows, the movies—cannot get enough.
And one thing every comic fan knows is a character’s origin story, and how it often defines who they are, what sort of values they hold.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
Earlier this week I spoke to a former Israeli intelligence officer, negotiator, and now author Avi Melamed. I was interviewing him about the situation in the Middle East with Israel fighting Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Iranian proxies.
During our discussion, I misspoke and called the proxies the Iranian Axis of Evil. He corrected me and said while it may be considered evil, the proper name is the Iranian Axis of Resistance—Al-Muqawama.
Melamed told me while many in the West fantasize this idea of resistance, in the Iranian paradigm, resistance is nothing any civil person should ever want.
Because Iranian resistance is, in large part, why there cannot be peace in the Middle East, and why there will not be until Iran and its proxies stop resisting the idea that Jewish people have a right to exist on this planet, that the nation of Israel is a sovereign member of the global community.
The Al-Muqawama doctrine, as the Washington Institute calls it, was adopted by most of the Arab world after Israel successfully defended itself in multiple conventional wars in the 1960s and 70s. The leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas define it as a state of constant combat, perpetual warfare—not with large standing armies, but with a steady stream of smaller strikes, death by a thousand cuts.
It is because of this doctrine that Israel developed air defense systems like the Iron Dome. Even the name Hamas is an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya, or the Islamic Resistance Movement.
Its origin story and its name define the terrorist organization as one committed to constant war, so it should not come as a surprise when the group’s leaders consistently reject peace offers and ceasefire deals, because those concepts are antithetical to their core beliefs. These characters are trapped by their origin stories, unlikely to ever change. Some new characters may be introduced at some point, whether that will be enough to change this current arc though, remains to be seen.
For senior producer Brett Baker, video editor Brian Spencer, and graphics artist Dakota Piteo, I am Ryan Robertson with Straight Arrow News signing off.
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