IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Magazine - October 2019 - 26

systems on battlefields is inevitable. Before that happens, there must be an overall assurance that decision
makers can create appropriate policies and rules of
engagement for AUSs. It is imperative that we devise
appropriate rules for utilizing these systems to complete their mission(s) on the battlefield while still complying with social norms/standards. There is no doubt
that a T&E procedure would play a key role in this process. Policy makers look to the T&E community to
ensure that the systems operate as projected before
they can pin down the legal policies for their operation.
To achieve this, ethics-based policies for autonomous
operation as well as the procedure to create them must
be agreed upon. These debates raise concerns and foster a lack of trust that autonomy will work only the way
it is intended to without causing danger to humans.
Hence, the legal, moral, and ethical considerations for
the operation of AUSs are very relevant. Test and validation procedures are yet to be evolved and standardized, but they are a prerequisite to fully instantiated
autonomous operations.
In general, it is not about the technology itself but
perceptions, such as the associated ethics and unestablished regulatory policies that will lay the foundation of
autonomy operationalization. Still, academia and industry need to keep pushing the developments that will
mature capabilities to readiness levels that establish
OA beyond any technological barrier to embracing

autonomy. OA for organizations, such as the DoD and
the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), is a major
undertaking due to the existence of reams of regulatory
boundaries that are very complicated to understand.
The Defense Acquisition University was established to
educate DoD workers about handling such activities.
The FAA's Alliance for System Safety of Unmanned Aircraft Systems Through Research Excellence supports
the integration of autonomous aircraft into the U.S.
National Airspace System.
Recent Developments in OA
A study related to the TECHLAV program was conducted
by research groups involving people from the DoD, academia, and industry. It was sponsored by the Test
Resource Management Center of the U.S. Office of the
Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment. Five working groups conducted research in five
domains, including ground, undersea, sea surface, and air
groups, in addition to a heterogeneous working group that
concentrated primarily on human-in-the-loop scenarios
and manned-unmanned teaming. These groups have
already identified several gaps in OA. Arguably, the most
important gap in autonomous T&E capabilities is our
inability to evaluate trust while simultaneously measuring
system performance. Methodologies as well as infrastructure must be developed to properly define and include the
trust component of AUSs.

(a)

(b)

(c)

Figure 2. OA from the C2 perspectives: As introduced, this aspect includes a heterogeneous system of systems

integration from the mission assessment point of view (a) to identify friend-or-foe components and mission
targets, (b) as well as provide real-time detection and reidentification from the autonomous unmanned systems
point of view. (c) This system includes multiple agents forming a heterogeneous system of autonomous vehicles.

IEEE SYSTEMS, MAN, & CYBERNETICS MAGAZINE O ctober 2019

IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Magazine - October 2019

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