Rear Adm. Brian Brakke, head of the U.S. Navy Expeditionary Combat Command, has said the service branch wants to use unmanned aerial system and artificial intelligence to plan repairs for damaged airfields, Defense News reported Wednesday.
Brakke told audience at the Global Explosive Ordnance Disposal Symposium and Exhibition he believes AI and machine learning technologies can help UAS perform initial damage assessment activities on airfields and plan how personnel can get runways back in service.
Some unmanned system experts believe part of the technology required for Brakke’s drone vision currently exists in the market in the form of UAS platforms built to fly over facilities and create high-fidelity maps for analysis, the report noted.
Michael Blades, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan, said that current commercial drones can fly over facilities a few times to take volume measurements and establish a three-dimensional map of specific areas.