It’s the biggest NATO exercise since the end of the Cold War – and it’s going feature self-driving vehicles and 3D printers. The exercise, named Trident Juncture 18, starts today in Norway and will last about a month.
Around 50,000 people will participate, along with 10,000 land vehicles and more than 200 aircraft and marine vessels. But there’ll also be a boat and land vehicle that can manoeuvre all on their own, robots that grab useful items out of storage for military personnel and 3D printers that pump out spare parts.
The autonomous boat is called Odin and it has been designed to drag a minesweeping device behind it. Odin can travel across a naval minefield while its towed device beams acoustic and magnetic signals into the water to detonate nearby mines. The boat could also deploy underwater autonomous vehicles able to make closer inspections. Such a system means humans don’t have to get close to submerged explosive devices.
Advertisement
During Trident Juncture, Odin will be monitored from 500 kilometres away with the help of a high-speed radio connection.
But NATO is also showing off a self-driving land vehicle that will be fitted with a remote-controlled weapon. In this case, a sentry-like device loaded with blanks, not live ammunition. The vehicle can select an appropriate route to drive along on its own once an operator has chosen a destination point. The on-board weapon will be used as a visual sensor to test the system’s surveillance capabilities.
“We’re thinking we can use it for defence in Norway,” says Kim Mathiassen at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment. “Border control is one possible application.” The project initially followed a desire to automate aspects of reconnaissance and surveillance.
New technology also features in the form of 3D printing, as a new facility by manufacturing company Fieldmade will be tried out. It has the , but houses 3D printers that can churn out spare parts for vehicles on demand.
For Trident Juncture, it will print plastic parts, not machined metal ones – but it is possible for plastic parts to replace metal parts in some vehicles, depending on how much load they must bear. The operators of the facility will also link up to a similar system used by the US Marines, to see how easily the two teams can share designs.
Finally, storage firm AutoStore is bringing to the exercise. It features a unit packed with compartments in which tools or spare parts can be kept. Small robots whizz across the surface and pick out whatever item the soldier or engineer desires.
Such technology is part of NATO efforts to shorten the “long tail” of military personnel backing up operations, says Justin Bronk at the Royal United Services Institute in London. But there’s a potential catch.
“The logistics chain is one of the most vulnerable to cyber-attack,” says Bronk. “Automation there could make that worse.”
Militaries are now driving the development of much autonomous technology rather than the commercial sector, according to Michael Blades, an analyst at market research firm Frost & Sullivan. “The military is really pushing it forward – just because everything they use, the highest cost in the military is personnel,” he says.
