UAVs and drones

[jlh]

In a single player scenario, if I were to give the red forces fire support artillery etc and a UAV , plotting a route for the UAV, would the red AI use the UAV to call in fire missions on blue forces?

In 4.3 will  AI red forces use the new Swingblade, and Dragonfly systems in single player scenarios if so equipped.

Thanks

[Mirzayev]

8 minutes ago, jlh said:

In a single player scenario, if I were to give the red forces fire support artillery etc and a UAV , plotting a route for the UAV, would the red AI use the UAV to call in fire missions on blue forces?

In 4.3 will  AI red forces use the new Swingblade, and Dragonfly systems in single player scenarios if so equipped.

Thanks

 

 

I can't answer for 4.3.

 

As of now with the UAV, the answer is "no."

 

The UAV does not plot contacts on the map, so the AI cannot "see" them.

[Ssnake]

At this stage, the answer is "No, but...". With subsequent updates, the answer will change to "Yes, but..."

 

Most of the new UAVs and all of the old UAVs are man-in-the-loop controlled. They require a human operator for observation. They are, essentially, remotely piloted, flying, dumb sensor packages, possibly combined with effectors like a laser illuminator and guided bombs or missiles.

As a consequence and as a conscious design decision we did not want a magic eye in the sky that can in seconds discover and report everything because that's not how these systems work. You either have a good magnification that allows identification, but a very narrow field of view which dramatically reduces your detection chances. Or a wider field of view that is good for general overview and situational awareness, but then you can't really identify what you're dealing with.

 

I believe that this is going to change, eventually. I believe that more and more UAVs will come with some form of image recognition and the ability to report approximate locations as long as the electronic warfare environment will be benign (an assumption that is in itself questionable). These systems will have a limited ID range and a limited field of view, but if and when they more or less directly overfly a target they will probably report what they see in an automatic fashion. However, even in the best of cases these sightings, if fed into a battlefield management system, would have to be treated as "unconfirmed sightings" because the image recognition may be able to find the shape of a T-72, but it might not be able to sense a decoy or an old wreck from a live tank, and even if it can, its ability to differentiate between a neutral, friendly, or hostile T-72 will be limited in the best of cases, or nonexistant.

 

Version 4.3 will have a limited robotic surveillance capability that will work for designated areas, but not in a completely autonomous fashion, and you couldn't program a flight path, and it requires "the science-fiction" UAV (a system that is still in development, and then with a generous extrapolation from our end). We want to give the Mission Designers the ability to try out something with it, but without completely wrecking the existing game, so to speak.