AeroVironment has rolled out a new long-range loitering one-way attack drone called Red Dragon that the company designed to operate with very “limited user interaction.” The highly autonomous munition uses a visual navigation system and an optical seeker to make it more survivable, especially in the face of enemy electronic warfare systems. Red Dragon’s capabilities also underscore an ongoing debate around lethal autonomous weapons, which has grown particularly amid advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies, as TWZ has previously explored in an in-depth feature.
AeroVironment unveiled the electrically-powered 45-pound Red Dragon, which is designed to be launched via a catapult on the ground, today at this year’s SOF Week conference, which TWZ is attending. Company representatives offered additional details from the show floor about the drone, which is said to have been employed in combat already by at least one unspecified customer.
Red Dragon is designed around a highly automated concept of “optional man in the loop” control, “so limited user interaction,” Michael Bigney, program director at AeroVironment, told TWZ in an interview. “It relies on our proprietary AV [AeroVironment] visual navigation, digital scene matching, and hardened GPS to get from launch to target, and then it relies on automatic target recognition with our SPOTR-Edge product line to identify and interrogate targets.”
The drone’s proprietary navigation system also fuses in data from other sources, including airspeed sensors, laser range-finders, and “optical float” in its camera to help determine position without the need for a GPS connection.
The drone itself is designed around “more or less a powered glider approach, so that it wants to fly, it wants to stay in the air. So it gives you a lot of really good dwell time, so that you can really, kind of, interrogate those targets that you’re looking for,” Bigney added. “So we typically will transit about 25 meters a second [around 56 miles per hour] … so your total flight time for 400 kilometers [close to 250 miles] is, it’s about five or six hours.”
AeroVironment says Red Dragon is also capable of accelerating up to around 100 miles per hour (45 meters per second) in a terminal sprint to the target. The drone is not designed to be reusable if it does not prosecute a target after launch.
Red Dragon has a modular payload bay with a maximum weight limit of some 22 pounds (10 kilograms). The standard payload currently is a five-pound explosively formed penetrator (EFP) warhead, which would give it a degree of anti-armor capability. AeroVironment says that the bay could also accommodate electronic warfare or sensor payloads.
Simplicity of design to help rapidly scale up production and keep costs low was also a focus of the Red Dragon design process, according to AeroVironment. The drone makes heavy use of non-unique, commercially available components, and a more exportable version that is not subject to the U.S. government’s International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) could be on the horizon. In general, precision munitions that can be acquired in substantial numbers relatively quickly and cheaply are of great and still-growing interest to the U.S. military and other armed forces globally.
All of these other features aside, it is really Red Dragon’s highly autonomous navigation and terminal guidance capabilities that truly stand out in today’s announcement.
“So we set a target box that the expected target is going to be in. That can be a small box [or a] big box,” Bigney explained. “So, depending on how large it is, we’ll give you the ability to transit, and then once it [Red Dragon] interrogates [and] finds it [the target], how long it’s going to go to that target depends on how big that box is. Our attack angle can vary to some degree … but in general, it’s about a minute you have once you acquire [a] target.”
“So whether that’s a stationary piece of infrastructure, a building structure, compounds all the way down to some mobile targets, you know, small vehicles, truck size, type things, or enemy infrastructure,” the “diversity of target[s]” Red Dragon can engage is “pretty vast,” he added.
TWZ laid out this exact concept of operations in our previous feature on the future of artificial intelligence/machine learning technology infusion into lower-end drones.
The aforementioned SPOTR-Edge software, which AeroVironment describes as a “perception system,” automatically detects and categorizes targets based on a detailed built-in data library.
“So essentially, this is our proprietary method of taking all kinds of battlefield data, scrape data, all sources, anything we can [use to] get a picture of the target is useful data, and that all kind of gets jammed in,” Bigney said. “We will use some level of supplemental information that we’ll put in there. That is something that we will manufacture to fill gaps. But we take anything we can get, whether that’s overhead, whether that’s at the ground level, you know, preferably, ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance data], infrared, electro-optical, any of the above.”
It is also important to note that visual navigation systems and optical seekers, in general, are passive and are immune to radio-frequency electronic warfare attacks. The use of those capabilities can only reduce Red Dragon’s own signal emissions, which would make it harder for opponents to spot and track the drone, and otherwise know they were being targeted in the first place. Red Dragon has a low auditory signature, as well, per the manufacturer. Many currently fielded counter-drone systems rely heavily on passive signal detection to alert operators to incoming threats and help engage them.
Electronic warfare jammers are also common among counter-drone capabilities today, and their effectiveness has been clearly demonstrated in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Ukrainian and Russian forces have, in turn, adapted to the heavy electronic warfare environment with counter-countermeasures like uncrewed platforms with physical fiber optic lines trailing back to their operators, which impose different limitations. AeroVironment says lessons learned from the employment of its Switchblade family of loitering munitions in Ukraine, as well as other unspecified locales, factored into Red Dragon’s development.
Red Dragon does have a radio link back to an operator, as well as hardened GPS to assist with navigation, but AeroVironment makes clear that the design was not crafted with constant human interaction in mind.
“So we have a radio in there that you have limited interaction [through during] critical components, critical moments during the mission,” Bigney said. “You can always send a new mission to redirect, to go off to another target. But when the aircraft sees a target, interrogates it and says, ‘I have identified this, I do know, in fact, that this is my target,’ it’s going to send you back a feed that the user then can say, go or no, go, do I want to engage or do I want to wave off and continue searching?”
“So you’ll always get that feedback from that, and they [Red Dragons] will breadcrumb themselves out there,” he added. “So you can really stretch that length far where you know, one, that’s on station, on target, relays to multiple aircraft, all the way back to your GCS [ground control station].”
The maximum range at which the operator can be from the drone is dependent on a variety of factors, including the presence of electronic warfare. Under optimal conditions, a direct line-of-sight link from a user on the ground to the drone could stretch up to around 40 miles, according to AeroVironment. As noted, this could be further extended using relays, including ones in the air. Red Dragon’s mode of operation, by default, if the connection to its operator is lost, and whether it can prosecute targets on its own, is unclear, but AeroVironment says the mission planning process does involve creating a “ditch plan.” We have reached out for additional information.
“One of the key differentiating factors is that we believe this product is going to move at the speed of software in terms of how the capabilities evolve. And so some of these variabilities, like attack angles, time for decision making, is really an area we work tightly with our customers on and we build that software specifically for their mission needs,” Jeff Rodrian, executive vice president of AeroVironment’s MacCready Works, also told TWZ directly at SOF Week. “And so it’s really an interesting landscape when you start thinking about these products becoming more and more software defined, and the variabilities we can give to work with our customers to meet their mission needs.”
Named after AeroVironment founder, the late Paul MacCready, MacCready Works is the company’s internal “innovation engine” focused on advanced software, autonomy, sensors, and other technology developments.
AeroVironment has long been a leader in loitering munitions and automated targeting capabilities, including the company’s Switchblade series, as you can read more about in this past TWZ feature. Just last year, the company secured a new contract from the U.S. Army for Switchblade 300s and 600s valued at nearly $1 billion. Switchblade 600s are also among the platforms the U.S. military has been acquiring with help from the Replicator initiative, as you can read more about here.
What AeroVironment is now presenting with Red Dragon is a new and significant step forward.
Especially with the use of the phrase “optional man in the loop,” this also feeds into ever-growing discussions around the employment of more and more autonomous weapon systems. TWZ previously highlighted these debates in another feature exploring how drone developments worldwide are in the midst of a major evolutionary, if not revolutionary, phase, thanks in large part to advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning. As we wrote:
“Taking the human out of the loop opens up a massive new frontier, and a troubling one at that. This is what’s so important to understand. The man-in-the-loop (MITL) control concept is hugely restrictive on what lower-end drones — including longer-range kamikaze types — could potentially do. This is especially true if you are trying to hit a dynamic target or target of opportunity at significant distances. These barriers rapidly degrade when the drone has the ability to pick its own targets using commercially available sensors and onboard artificial intelligence-enabled hardware and software.”
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“The moral implications of these developments are disturbing. While the U.S. military has maintained that it intends to always keep a human-in-the-loop for life-and-death decisions, this is a luxury many other actors will have no problem with jettisoning — by choice and/or tactical necessity. Once again, we are already beginning to see this happen in Ukraine. In doing so, an adversary could gain advantages on many levels.”
It is important to re-stress here that Red Dragon does still have an operator-in-the-loop control scheme, which aligns with current relevant U.S. government polices. At the same time, American authorities are also talking increasingly in terms of operator-on-the-loop rather than in-the-loop control for uncrewed systems.
Red Dragon is offering a high degree of autonomy, including in target selection, that continues to push the bounds of just how much operator interaction is required, reflecting already emerging global trends.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com