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Project Lead: Dr. Lael Rudd
Sponsoring Organization: DARPA
Website: https://www.darpa.mil/program/offensive-swarm-enabled-tactics
Project Synopsis: OFFSET envisions future small-unit infantry forces using swarms comprising 250 or more small unmanned aircraft and/or ground systems to accomplish diverse missions in complex urban environments. By leveraging and combining emerging technologies in swarm autonomy and human-swarm teaming, the program seeks to enable rapid development and deployment of breakthrough capabilities, including a swarm tactics development ecosystem and supporting open systems architecture. OFFSET is structured to demonstrate its technologies through frequent live experiments with various unmanned air and ground platforms. Roughly every six months, operational vignettes of progressively increasing complexity will challenge both the swarm architecture and developed swarm tactics across numerous technological and operational test variables, such as swarm size, spatial scale of operations, and mission duration.