L3Harris, a U.S. defense contractor, announced a new platform it is developing for the military that will allow for large swarms of unmanned systems across multiple domains to operate together seamlessly.
The new software, which the contractor unveiled on Monday, is named AMORPHOUS, which stands for Autonomous Multi-domain Operations Resiliency Platform for Heterogeneous Unmanned Swarms.
“Autonomy is a force multiplier, which is why we have designed AMORPHOUS as a multidomain, multimission capability that rapidly integrates a variety of uncrewed systems across the battlespace,” said Jon Rambeau, president of Integrated Mission Systems at L3Harris. “This project also highlights L3Harris’s partnerships with venture-backed and nontraditional companies to mature emerging defense capabilities more quickly and affordably.”
Rambeau compared the platform to an “orchestra conductor” and noted that simultaneously controlling thousands of assets is “really not something that’s possible to do with human control only,” according to Defense Scoop.
“One of the big problems that has yet to be solved is, how do you think about the control of not 10, not 100, not even 1,000 — but thousands of assets simultaneously? And that’s really not something that’s possible to do with human control only. You have to have a system that can be the orchestra conductor once it’s given a command,” Rambeau explained.
Unlike other efforts, AMORPHOUS will not have a mothership that controls and communicates with the drones. Instead, the platform will operate with “decentralized decision-making,” according to the company. Operating this way effectively takes away some of the risk of what would happen if the “mothership” were disrupted and affected the mission of all the unmanned systems.
The Pentagon announced in August 2023 its “Replicator” program, which was created to quickly develop and produce thousands of drones across warfighting domains. The first component of this initiative is focused on building and operationalizing thousands of autonomous systems within the next 18 to 24 months, which would be August 2025.
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Several recent events have highlighted the various threats posed by drones.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has shown the utility of drone warfare; three U.S. service members were killed at Tower 22, a small U.S. military outpost in Jordan, last year in a drone attack that targeted the base, while dozens of others were injured; and there were mysterious drone sightings on the East Coast recently.