Mica Endsley, the Air Force’s outgoing chief scientist, is set to release a report focusing on autonomy before she leaves her position June 5.
The report, “Autonomous Horizons,” will be released the first week of June, Endsley told a small group of reporters Wednesday at the Pentagon. Endlsey said autonomous systems is one of the five key revolutionary technologies outlined in a high-level Air Force strategy that the chief of staff and secretary signed off on a few months ago. The strategy, Endsley said, is the guiding document for the Air Force over the next 30 years.
Endsley said her report listed five key technologies for the future: hypersonic weapons, directed energy weapons, autonomous systems, unmanned air vehicles (UAV) and nanotechnology. The report, she said, will focus on the autonomy portion but will also touch on UAV.
Endsley described autonomy as the ability for systems to act independently and deal with a wider variety of circumstances and events so they don’t need as much human intervention as in the past. Endsley said autonomy, in the past, had been rather “brittle” and required a lot of human intervention to keep on track.
The Air Force expects to see increased used of autonomy in manned systems moving forward, Endsley said, allowing those platforms to operate at longer distances and perform without critical capabilities like communications links. Endsley emphasized how the Air Force is concerned that space attributes, including communications links, could be deactivated by an adversary in future warfare, making it critical that aircraft be able to perform independently for longer periods of time.
The Air Force is also examining autonomy in cyber operations, Endsley said, because the service may need to react faster than a human is able due to the potential speed and volume of a cyber attack. She said the Air Force is also looking at adding autonomy to command and control (C2) to integrate and prioritize information as it comes across a network.
“Autonomy can be one of those technologies that can be leveraged to support our efficiency and effectiveness in the future,” Endsley said.
Air Force chief scientists generally serve two-year terms. Endsley said she’ll return to her company, SA Technologies, in Phoenix. The service is set to announce its next chief scientist on Thursday. Endsley declined Wednesday to say who it would be, only that it would be a man.