Navy downselects next slate of technologies for ‘Silent Swarm’ series

It started as a “wacky idea.”

Now, coming up on its fourth year of execution, the Navy has gone from 17 technologies in year one to nearly 70 technologies for its Silent Swarm experimentation initiative, which aims to test emerging electromagnetic spectrum tech with unmanned systems, run by the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division.

The exercise team just conducted the downselect for next year’s event, choosing close to 70 technologies from 156 submissions. The key difference this year, according to Robert Gamberg, project lead for Silent Swarm at NSWC Crane, is despite the same ballpark of technologies participating from last year, the quality to choose from is much better.

“I will tell you, though, this year, the quality of the submissions, really increased. That downselect was very challenging,” Gamberg said in an interview. “We have a much higher level of submissions this year than what we’ve had in the previous three years … About same size [of selectees this year], but the depth of our insights that we’ll gain from the experimentation, I think it’s going to continue to increase this year.”

The effort originally began with an email subject line to Gamberg’s superiors saying: “I’ve got a wacky idea.” In his mind, as an electronic warfare professional in the aviation community, there wasn’t a lot of effort focused on using small unmanned systems for non-kinetic capabilities. Plus, many of the efforts were computer-aided experiments.

“I don’t see anybody really working in a dedicated fashion in the employment of non-kinetic effects on these small, multi-domain unmanned system. [There are ] people looking at a lot of other different applications, but I don’t see anybody looking at that,” he said. “As a lifelong electronic warfare guy, I know sometimes that’s just because folks — they just aren’t looking at the world through that lens … Folks are looking at what is the most obvious solution to get a platform that can get a payload to a place to achieve a kinetic effect.”

Robotic platforms provide a great avenue to employ non-kinetic capabilities such as electronic warfare. Given they emit within the spectrum, they can be easily discovered by the enemy and targeted. By offloading that task to an unmanned system, it defrays the risk to humans.

Plus, other platforms in the fleet are of limited quantity, and massing unmanned systems can proliferate effects across the battlespace or increase the range of larger platforms.

“There aren’t enough [EA-18G] Growlers in the world to provide all the electronic warfare we need,” Gamberg said, referring to a manned aircraft that the Navy uses to perform EW missions.

Rather than conducting computer-aided scenarios, Gamberg wanted to bring these concepts to real-life experimentation venues. With the go-ahead from superiors — and securing funding from the integrated sensing and cyber directorate of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering — Silent Swarm was born, with the first experiment taking place in 2022. And it’s been growing ever since.

The objective, Gamberg said, is to examine the impact of small electromagnetic spectrum operations-related capabilities employed on small, attritable, multi-domain unmanned systems, particularly from technology readiness levels 2 to 5 (the Department of Defense rates the readiness of technologies on a scale of 1, basic principles, to 9, system proven through operations).

It also involves mature tech that vendors are seeking to use in different ways than initially intended.

“We have folks that have maybe [things that] were initially designed as an unattended ground sensor. It’s a very well-developed unattended ground sensor, but it’s never been on an airborne platform or a maritime platform, those types,” Gamberg said.

He noted that over the years, NSWC Crane has tried to refine and structure the experimentation efforts so they can meld into the operational concepts of the services, such as distributed maritime operations for the Navy and expeditionary advanced base operations for the Marine Corps.

“Understanding all of those things with the background of those folks on our team and the touch points we have with leadership across the joint force, we make sure that the event that we build, it has traceability to those things that are being planned and executed in the real operational world,” he said.

Some technologies tested over the years have actually landed contract opportunities with U.S. Special Operations Command, the Marine Corps and Air Force.

The main thrust of the effort is looking specifically at the payloads, not the platforms, Gamberg said. Officials employ surrogate systems from a variety of sources to include platforms used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to test out the payloads, in some cases, using duct tape and zip ties to mount them on UAS, unmanned surface, underwater vessels and ground systems.

If a technology proves itself, it can then be transitioned to the acquisition community and others where those professionals worry about how to employ it or how to integrate it into particular programs of record.

Focus areas for demonstration include distributed electronic attack, electronic deception technologies, electromagnetic support to sense the environment to develop a geographic position, RF-enabled cyber capabilities and resilient communications networks to stitch everything together.

“We need to figure out a way to control all these types of things. We need to figure out a way to push information forward, or if we’re sensing, to get that information back to the hands of the operators so they can take something with it. We need to be able to do that in a contested environment. That’s a big part of our experimentation as well,” Gamberg said.

The technologies are deployed in a series of vignettes at the Alpena Combat Readiness Training Center in Alpena, Michigan, with vendors operating in teams.

Gamberg explained that these vignettes are designed in creative ways to create a gamified environment for experimentation.

Last year, for example, saw a modern interpretation of Homer’s “The Odessey” in which one team playing Homer’s hero Odysseus must rescue his wife Penelope who has been captured by a team playing the Trojans, holding her up in a high value unit that was at a certain location on Lake Huron.

The team playing the Greeks had to use their technologies to create maneuver space to find the high value unit and deliver a digital payload to disable it. Meanwhile, the team playing the Trojans had to use their tech to try to prevent that maneuver from occurring.