The Singapore Armed Forces using drone swarm technologies at Exercise Forging Sabre in Idaho, United States, from Sept 11 to 30. Drone swarm refers to the ability of a group of drones to autonomously coordinate as a team to achieve a mission objective, such as area surveillance.As the war continued, commercially-available drones from Ukraine, and later Russia, joined the battle, providing ground forces with cost-effective visual intelligence about enemy positions hidden in villages and trenches.
While the defence community regularly conducts tests in Singapore and other smaller exercises, the proof-of-concept nature of XFS gives military planners and scientists the opportunity to continuously develop these systems alongside conventional warfighting platforms such as fighter jets and helicopters, receive feedback from the upper echelons on their performance, all while doing so in the vast training areas in Idaho.
The Republic of Singapore Air Force and the Defence Science and Technology Agency are experimenting with the application of drone swarm for battlefield intelligence. These swarming algorithms are tested in the Forging Sabre “sandbox”, where operators evaluate them, engineers make on-the-spot improvements, and the process repeats.
An increasingly urbanised battlefield means that these targets may hide in or around buildings to evade the watchful eyes of high-flying unmanned aerial vehicles, sometimes positioning themselves near sensitive structures like schools, hospitals, and religious sites. Datalink is displayed as images on the cockpit console, providing pilots with enhanced situational awareness as part of an integrated warfighting system.