Striking the right balance in manned-unmanned teams (MUM-T)

Defense and dual-use texhnologies

Good morning,

A debate has raged for several years over the right mix of manned and unmanned systems in current and future warfare. This debate has crescendoed recently with Elon Musk—in his role as advisor on ‘government efficiency’—taking Lockheed Martin to task for the F-35 program. Musk has expressed his belief that it’s foolish for the military to continue buying manned, capital platforms instead of investing in small, autonomous systems. This week Musk received some ideological support as Booz Allen Hamilton’s CEO, Horacio Rozanski, stated that we’ve already reached a point where we’re seeing fully-roboticized warfare, albeit principally in the cyber domain.

At the same time, Brig Gen Doug ‘Beaker’ Wickert, the commander of the Air Force’s 412th Test Wing and Lt Gen (Ret) Dave Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute, have both cast doubt on fully autonomous warfare. Wickert was quoted saying that fully-roboticized warfare is ‘centuries away’ and Deptula outlined the case for…