Lessons to learn from the sUAS market for the growing GenAI market in the defense sector…
Thinking back seven years ago to when I was helping run the Thunderdrone event at SOFWERX, there’s a number of interesting lessons to be learned for how the sUAS market evolved from that point, and how those lessons might apply now to the newly growing GenAI market. “We can’t even talk about testing these things with weapons on them”, was the cry from so many DoD leaders at the time (ISR was the primary focus). Security and safety was the top priority regardless of the weapons potential. “We need better, bigger, and more capable platforms”, was the constant drum beat of requirements managers at the time (Group 3+ was the focus for more payload and flight time). Looking forward to today’s battlefield, we see quite the opposite.
Safety takes a backseat to battlefield capability when there’s a wartime need. The war on terrorism just didn’t have the same requirements as the war in Ukraine. Different battlefields have different adversaries with different tactics. The need for small cheap capable sUAS’s outstripped the desire for bigger, more expensive, and far fewer larger UAS’s. In a war of mobility and attrition, maintaining production at speed is the key, and the cheapest MVP to produce the desired effects wins.
With GenAI, I would expect to see the same shifts in time. Current security paranoia will make way for new unique battlefield demands to drive mass utilization. Large expensive highly capable systems will likely make way for smaller cheaper more portable/disposable systems in the future. Lord knows we don’t want to be sending SOF teams into future battlefields to grab the GenAI box from a downed weapons system, like UAS crypto boxes of old in OIF/OEF.
I expect to see the Navy continue to lead the way on this evolution, as they start most new capabilities on self contained networks & systems for ships, then scale them down from there.
Link to SOFWERX Thunderdrone event article: https://www.socom.mil/thunder-drone-tech-expo-2017
