Cadets, Midshipmen Compete For Greater Good by Brandon OConnor, U.S. Military Academy at West Point
February 23, 2020
When the U.S. Military Academy’s close combat team faced off
against the U.S. Naval Academy during December 2019 in Quantico,
Virginia, each team was equipped with a few more tools than they
typically carry into a competition.
Drones flew through the
air, unmanned ground vehicles roamed the streets and communication
signals were jammed. This was no ordinary small squad combat
competition. It was one of two Squad with Autonomous
Teammates–Challenges that take place every academic year with one
occurring each semester.
SWAT-C is sponsored by the Office of Naval Research and serves as
a capstone research project for cadets and midshipmen. A squad from
West Point’s close combat team and their Navy counterpart then serve
as the beta testers and boots on the ground Soldiers who use the
equipment and give feedback.
“We field the systems and then
we give them feedback,” Class of 2021 Cadet Parker Minotti, a member
of the close combat team, said. “We’re almost like the miniature
client for them. They ask us what we can use to win as the
warfighters.”
At West Point, the capstone is a collaborative
effort between the Department of Military Instruction and the
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. The close
combat squad that uses the equipment includes 14 cadets and the
research team includes 11 firsties (seniors) from a variety of
academic departments.
December 8, 2019 - The Squad with Autonomous Teammates–Competition (SWAT-C) capstone team is a multi-disciplinary
group consisting of cadets and faculty from EECS, CME, Systems, DMI and the Close Combat Team. (U.S.
Military Academy at West Point courtesy photo)
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“It’s almost like rapid prototyping,” said Class of 2020 Cadet
Benjamin Xu, an engineering management major and member of the
research team. “We have several commercial off the shelf systems we
can dish out to our ground team right now, but we’re also trying to
build our own unmanned ground vehicles, and unmanned aerial
vehicles.”
For most capstone projects, cadets have both
semesters to produce a product for their client, but the SWAT-C
research team has only a few months to have their first iteration up
and running because the first competition takes place at the end of
the fall semester.
This year’s team has chosen to build the vast majority of their
unmanned systems from scratch instead of using off the shelf models.
By building them, the cadets have more ability to customize the
devices to the ground force’s needs. The team’s goal is to
eventually make them fully autonomous, but that may end up having to
be a task for a future capstone team.
The SWAT-C research
team is also working with the Department of Defense’s Android
Tactical Assault Kit, which provides users with a satellite map
where they can track friendly forces on the same network and also
drop pins to show where enemies are. Think a minimap in Fortnite or
Call of Duty, but in the form of a smartphone attached to a
Soldier’s chest or forearm.
The team is also working on
devices to identify, locate and possibly jam enemy communication
signals. Whether it is a drone, a jammer or the ATAK, the goal is to
develop and test technology that will keep Soldiers safe in the
field and make their jobs easier.
“We’re basically trying to
design systems that help augment and help our infantry squads gain a
tactical advantage in the battlefield, especially during conflict or
during a firefight,” Xu said. “We’re trying to build it and them to
have better communications, better situational awareness and more
options for lethal or nonlethal means of engagement.”
Along
with designing equipment, the purpose of SWAT-C is to test how
Soldiers can use the equipment and what they may or may not find
necessary. By taking the devices out of the lab and equipping the
close combat team with them for a competition against Navy, both
academy’s research teams and the Office of Naval Research are able
to get immediate feedback on the usefulness and downfalls of the
products.
For instance, Minotti said during last year’s
competition they were able to use one of the loud drones not just
for surveillance, but also to distract Navy by flying it over their
heads. They also realized Navy was hyper focused on following the
satellite maps on the ATAK at the detriment of checking their
surroundings, which made them easy targets.
“It’s mainly
testing what an infantry squad can better use because it doesn’t
make much sense to spend millions of dollars and man-hours
developing a system that a regular infantry squad won’t know how to
use or really won’t help them that much,” Class of 2020 Cadet
Gustavo Lugo Jimenez, an electrical engineering major and member of
the research team, said. “It’s really fielding different types of
platforms and seeing which one they find more beneficial.”
Earlier in 2019, SWAT-C started off with a victory for the West
Point team as they defeated a Marine team 2-1 in a force-on-force
competition this weekend in Quantico.
The two-day
competition pitted the teams against each other in a series of
tactical exercises during which they were assisted by the research
team’s ground and aerial vehicles.
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