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Navy/USMC

ONR To Integrate Payloads On Swarming UAVs

By Marc Selinger

Tuesday, October 25th, 2016

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ONR To Integrate Payloads On Swarming UAVs

The RTX Coyote small unmanned aerial system (UAS). Photo: Defense Daily.

The Office of Naval Research (ONR), whose Low-Cost UAV Swarming Technology (LOCUST) program has been experimenting with flying swarms of small unmanned aerial vehicles, plans to begin integrating payloads on such drones next spring or summer, ONR’s leader said Oct. 25.The follow-on effort, tentatively called LOCUST II, will try to show that multiple UAVs with both similar and different payloads can operate together, said Rear Adm. Mathias Winter, chief of naval research. Winter hopes to demonstrate the payload integration in a year…

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