Background and requirement:

Adversarial use of Combined Uncrewed Systems represents an emerging challenge area for defence. Sagentia Defence was jointly tasked by Dstl and NATO with identifying current and near future threats posed by such systems, establishing emergent command/control, tactical and autonomy-related vulnerabilities, and generating/assessing a set of aligned counteractivities.

Approach:

• Based on extensive research and SME input, Sagentia Defence created a comprehensive library of 32 CUxS “archetypes,” which covered a full mixture of scale, mission type, domain mix and autonomy levels.
• A selection of these archetypes were briefed to the NATO C-CUxS working group and then explored in a military and technical SME workshop via four vignettes. This established a broad range of plausible CUxS activities, vulnerabilities and associated counteractivities.
• Emerging counteractivities were worked up and organised into four high-level areas (Detect, Soft Kill, Hard Kill, Targeting the Wider System). A final set of three high-level archetypes embodying key enduring attributes of future CUxS systems were generated (Mass Saturation, Smart Self-Organising and Complex Multi-Domain systems).
• At a second SME workshop, counteractivities were assessed and scored for their feasibility and effectiveness against each archetype.
• In combination, this activity has generated an evidence base from which a set of task findings and associated capability development, operational and doctrinal recommendations have been formulated.

Outcome:

• Task findings and recommendations have been briefed at appropriate Dstl and NATO levels and have enabled them to better understand the threat posed by CUxS systems and the most cost-effective approaches to combating them.