DARPA tests drone swarms that send groups of up to 250 autonomous vehicles into combat areas

This week, DARPA shared footage of an experimental new program that uses large drones swarms to locate targets and gather situational intelligence in urban raid missions. Part of DARPA's Offensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) program, the test featured a coordinated group of 250 autonomous air and ground vehicles. Those vehicles were sent into to a simulated urban environment, providing live information about sight lines, enemy positioning, environmental hazards, and general layout as part of a simulated military raid. The test was conducted at DARPA's Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center, a facility in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The missions tasked the drone swarm with finding several AprilTags, a kind of QR code, that had been placed inside buildings in the training compound, which was designed to approximate a city block.