Field testing the future - What drone swarms signal for emerging operations

June 20, 2025 - Defence Stories

By: Jennifer Whiteley, CJWC

The Canadian Joint Warfare Centre (CJWC) monitors signals of change to help anticipate how emerging technologies could reshape future operations. Recent exercises by allied forces have demonstrated rapid advances in drone swarm technologies — developments that hold significant implications for the future of capability development, as seen at the recent Project Convergence Capstone 5 exercise.

In Project Convergence Capstone 5 — a U.S.-led joint exercise involving the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand — France’s Foreign Legion showcased “automated hives,” vehicle-based systems that enable a single operator to deploy and manage multiple autonomous drones in under five minutes. These drones conduct reconnaissance, 3D mapping, target marking, and even electronic warfare — all from a single platform integrated into existing combat vehicles.

The key takeaway for future planning is clear: autonomous systems are moving out of experimental phases and onto the battlefield. This raises critical questions about how manned platforms and autonomous extensions will work together in future operations. As militaries experiment with integrated human-machine teams, those shaping future operations will need to consider how to keep pace.

The speed of these systems could also change how commanders make decisions. Terrain modeling, once requiring significant time and analysis, can now be done in-theater in as little as 20 minutes. This allows for near real-time updates to mission planning and enhanced interoperability with allies, ensuring that joint forces can coordinate more effectively.

Across the defence community, these signals point to a growing need to prepare for future operating environments where drones will not simply supplement operations but act as forward sensors, decoys, and decision aids. Future deployments may include vehicle-integrated drone hives as standard equipment, and personnel may increasingly find themselves training alongside autonomous systems that adapt and evolve on the fly.

CJWC uses strategic foresight to support early thinking on questions that may shape future operations: How will military doctrine evolve to integrate swarm tactics? What ethical and policy frameworks will guide the use of autonomous swarms in kinetic missions? How will logistics adapt to support large-scale swarm deployments in contested environments? And how quickly can defence organizations align on procurement and technical standards to ensure interoperability and security?

As these technologies advance, Canada has an opportunity to help shape their integration in ways that reflect operational realities and Canadian values.