From commercial toy-quads to free-ranging hunter-killers: Drone-autonomy levels in Command

April 5, 2025 · Posted in Command, Command PE · Comment 

“True drone autonomy isn’t just about flying without a pilot—it’s about making real-time decisions in unpredictable environments, with limited data, constrained power, and no room for error”
– ChatGPT, reflecting on its siblings on the front line

Uncrewed combat & support platforms (aka “drones”) are all the rage these days in defence circles, and not without good reason. However, they suffer from a fundamental limitation compared to more “traditional” crewed platforms: When not under direct human control (ie. in a realistically comms-challenged environment in any non-lopsided conflict), their ability to autonomously carry out their intended mission is drastically curtailed. By how much? Well, contrary to men, not all drones are created equal – and hence one of the new major simulation features of Command: variable drone autonomy levels.

The question of how much autonomy we are willing to grant to conscious-less machines armed with lethal weaponry has long escaped the confines of legal & ethical theoretical discussions, and is already hammered in the front lines of Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere, as well as the virtual battlefields of the major powers where doctrine, tactics and operational art are forged (see this excellent article by Bill Sweetman on the dilemmas of how best to employ CCAs in a future peer conflict).

Public western/NATO literature on the subject commonly refers different degrees of “drone autonomy” and then assigns individual uncrewed systems to each of them, to distinguish their autonomous capability. The dev team’s chosen structure closely (though not precisely) follows this public nomenclature. Let us explore the different levels and what they actually mean in the field, when their comms are lost:

– Remotely Piloted: These are the cheap & cheerful quadcopters or small-sized wingcraft or UGVs/USVs you can buy at your local store and have up and flying / rolling / sailing within minutes. Due to their low cost and high numbers, they are very popular in battlefields where comms are not contested. They are remotely-piloted and entirely dependent on their human operator for control. If comms are disrupted, they will stick with their last-ordered course and speed until comms are re-established; if they are not, then they’ll run out of fuel/energy and halt in place (or crash if airborne). While offline, they are unable to take any initiative in order to further their mission.

– Self-Recovering: Things are slightly improving here; if the comms link is lost, these units will loiter/hold at their current location and try to rejoin the comms grid; if successful they will resume their mission, otherwise they will autonomously return to their deployment base/host. It doesn’t sound like much, but retrieving back effortlessly your comms-disrupted force rather than losing them to every comms-jammer out there really does make a difference.

– Changeable Mission: (A more accurate description here might be “Flexible in-mission behavior”, but we don’t get to choose the terminology). A pretty significant jump in autonomy here: The offline vehicle will actually move ahead and try to perform its assigned mission. The bad news: Because of the lack of human oversight, the platform will not perform any pre-emptive checks for own damage, bingo/joker fuel status or winchester/shotgun weapon status – checks that (under human supervision & positive control) would trigger an immediate abort & RTB. In other words, it will press on to its mission even if it is objectively incapable of actually pulling it off and surviving.

– Fault/Event Adaptive: Another major step forward in intelligent behavior here: The platform will actually perform pre-emptive checks for own damage, bingo/joker fuel status or winchester/shotgun weapon status, and thus will avoid needlessly kamikazeing itself into a hopeless situation.

– Multi-Vehicle Coordination: Drones can be quite more effective when they are used in big groups (aka “swarms”). This level of autonomy allows a drone to participate in such a group – but only strictly as a group member. It can perform independent maneuvers only if it is the group’s designated leader.

– Battlespace Cognizant: This is an absolutely huge leap forward, and allows an offline unit to finally evaluate targets and threats on its own, rather than sticking to pre-assigned targets only. It can also maneuvers independently even if its part of a swarm, it can intelligently change its desired home base (though only from available fixed bases, not mobile bases like aircraft carriers) and can evaluate UNREP or air-to-air-refueling opportunities.

– Fully Autonomous: Now we are stepping firmly into Cyberdyne Systems territory. Fully-autonomous drones treat comms isolation almost as a nuisance rather than a crippling handicap: In addition to freely evaluating the targets & threats within their predefined mission parameters, they are also free to evaluate and engage any targets of opportunity that are relevant to their available weaponry. They are also able to modify their mission course instead of sticking to their predefined one, as well as changing their home base destination, either fixed or mobile. Such a unit will most definitely ask you for your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle – and you’ll be wise to accede. If the thought of heavily-armed robots having this freedom of action doesn’t give you pause, you might had been an excellent Carmageddon player.

The autonomy level of a drone is displayed on the DB viewer:


It is also accessible (and editable) through the Lua API:

theU = ScenEdit_GetUnit({name='Anka-S UAV', guid='4FTZEE-0HNA5SMK3O9K4'})
theU.autonomylevel = 1500
print(theU.autonomylevel)

(Note: In DB3000 v510 and previous versions, most drones have their stock autonomy level set to “Undefined”. We therefore recommend using v511+  when using this feature)

One common characteristic of off-grid drones is that, when they get disconnected from their side network, their mission becomes “fixed” for them. In simulation terms, they obtain and use a “private snapshot” copy of their mission state as it was at the moment of disconnect, and use that as reference. Any changes on their original assigned mission are NOT reflected on their private snapshot; for example if the doctrine or ROE settings change, or the area of a patrol shifts around, the disconnected drone sticks to its “known” mission parameters; this is one of the key operational drawbacks of even the most advanced autonomous drones.

The Mission Editor has been adjusted to display such “snapshot” missions, if they are the selected ones (for example, if the player is in direct control of an isolated drone and selects its mission):

The ME window now also more clearly displays platforms who are assigned to a mission but are currently off-grid:

When a unit is off-grid, any attempts to transfer it to another mission or change its mission parameters will fail.

Variable drone autonomy levels is an opt-in scenario realism feature (disabled by default, to avoid disrupting existing scenarios). It is one of the biggest new simulation features of Command, and one of the key new additions on the new upcoming major update.

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