The first trial of the spiral phase of the conceptual experimentation campaign on Robotics and Autonomous Systems has been completed after three intense weeks. The trial was led by the Evaluation and Innovation Command of the Army (COMVIE) at the Monte Romano polygon site.
The multi-year experimentation campaign on RAS stems from the analysis of emerging and disruptive technologies and the impact their use will have on the way military operations are conducted.
The experiment, initiated early 2022, aims to maximize the advantages, including employment, offered by new technologies, tackling different themes each year, with appropriate spirals.
This year’s spiral, began on July 31, is centered around the concept of distributed logistics and includes two main moments of field experimentation, one of which has just ended. During this first trial, the technological assets were tested in operation ‘vignettes’ that explored the potential operational advantages offered in a combat scenario, replicated and dynamically stimulated in a mixed reality environment, thanks to the Modelling & Simulation support from the Department of Innovation and Experimentation Projects at COMVIE.
The objective was to maximize the operational effectiveness and efficiency of the assets being tested, together with the reduction of operational risk. Throughout all the experimentation stages, a dedicated team of observers from COMVIE, the Logistics Command of the Army and the Army General Staff collected and processed data that will flow into a final report.
The activity, complex also from an organizational point of view, involved stages of preparation, characterized by the influx of the industrial sector and the initialization of various systems, ending in late October, and then moved to familiarity with training on the systems for the personnel of the 3rd Alpini Regiment and the 185th Paratrooper Artillery Regiment.
The main technologies used include autonomous robotic systems, both land and air, as well as a battlefield management system also used in previous experimental activities: ARGO. In particular, the introduction of RAS will help reduce risk for military personnel in high-intensity contexts, while maintaining operational output.
At the conclusion of the activities, the Commander for Evaluation and Innovation of the Army, Corps General Francesco Olla, pointed out that ‘technological modernization and the Army’s capacity implementation pass through the experimentation campaigns in which the defense industrial sector and the Armed Force confront each other to seek the most suitable solutions to operate in highly complex scenarios, such as the current ones, in which the military instrument must be flexible and adherent to sudden changes, able to operate effectively in any circumstance, preserving the integrity of its own personnel, through the use of technologically state-of-the-art operational tools.’
Source and photo credit @Italian Army-Command for the Evaluation and Innovation of the Army
