Networked, Collaborative, Autonomous
Systems

Networked, Collaborative, Autonomous (NCA) systems describe a capability that needs very little, to no, human involvement. These systems largely think for themselves to conduct highly complex operations. Here we apply machine learning techniques to create software "AI agents" that were trained to learn how to sense their environment, generate a shared "world view", ingest human or commander intent, and decide on their own how to collaboratively accomplish the mission. ​ In a recent DoD year-long program, we trained a group of 30-50 of these NCA agents (each having an identical copy of the AI agent running on-board) to fly into a heavily-defended anti-access/area-denied (A2/AD) environment and conduct military operations. Humans were monitoring the mission but were not directly controlling any of it.