Office of Naval Research (ONR) Science and Technology department head Frank Herr is flanked by a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in NPS' Advanced Robotic Systems Engineering Laboratory (ARSENL), Feb. 6. Herr, a member of the senior executive service, heads the Ocean Battlespace Sensing Department at ONR and is a key sponsor for several UAV and unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) projects underway at NPS.

Herr came to NPS to observe the swarm vs. swarm Joint Interagency Field Experimentation (JIFX) program being conducted at Camp Roberts later this week. He also serves as the program manager for the university's long-standing Consortium for Robotics and Unmanned Systems, Education and Research (CRUSER). He spoke to members of the consortium in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Auditorium during his visit to campus.

"This is ONR's 71st year of bringing together technological advances in science, which benefit the Navy and Marine Corps warfighter. ONR's charter is a mere three pages, but has had far-reaching impact on innovation in the sciences," said Herr. "It contended to remobilize those labs and many of its scientists who helped to win World War II. And now combined with our five other departments and 450-employee workforce, in the U.S. and overseas, we are moving ahead in many tactical areas" said Herr.

Herr also extolled the virtue of never losing sight of sound business and best practices, and continuing ONR's network of collaboration with universities, working closely with the more than 12,000 principal investigators in ONR's "Rolodex".

"Autonomy is a good example of what we're doing right. And what's exciting to me is this dogfight-induced behavior being injected into the offensive/defensive concept of maneuvering," he said. "As we move ahead, these types of dynamic mission plans must [be able to] chase after machines that can learn behaviors as the mission changes or intensifies. This has to maximize countering underwater-unmanned vehicles and evasion tactics, all using a wide swath of sensors that can collapse time and area coverage," described Herr.

Herr has been with ONR for 30 years and is the U.S. National Representative for the Maritime Systems Group of The Technical Cooperation Program, coordinating technology among the U.S., United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Herr says he considers CRUSER's contribution to ONR initiatives very important, as he sees great usefulness in having all of the services interact with each other on these advanced technologies.

"The unique value that CRUSER brings to the Navy is that the emerging officers who are now lieutenants and lieutenant commanders will be our future leaders, admirals and program managers, who will look back on my stories, the important research that's being conducted with themselves in the mix," Herr said. "My hope is that they will continue in the field of autonomy."