This year, they chose to recreate the attacks by the British on Americans in Lake Huron during the War of 1812. Silent Swarm Co-Leader Sondra Laughlin said this gives companies a chance to test the capabilities of their products.

“It really is moving them forward and feeling out the challenges of being outside, being on the water, being on a drone, being around other things,” she said. “I mean, we have had radios that were interfering with each other because they are too close together.”

Some of the equipment tested aims to improve communication to teams on missions, jam radio signals and protect navigation systems. Gamberg said this technology allows troops to safely scout out areas and protect themselves by remaining undetected.

“If we can put unmanned capabilities out in an area where it would be too risky to put our uniformed personnel, there’s some advantage there to help us figure out what’s going on out in that environment,” Gamberg said.

News Photo by Blace Carpenter Silent Swarm officials work on the equipment on Tuesday during their testing phase of the two-week experiment.

The first week of Silent Swarm was used to prepare equipment and brief teams on their goals for the experiment. The second week is the simulation of war missions, where they test the new technology.

Gamberg said they try to get creative each year with their missions.

“Last year we went into ancient Greek literature,” he said. “This year they came up with the War of 1812 idea, and that’s what we have remapped.”

He said recreating historic missions can make this event more fun.

“We do have some participants and assessors from the United Kingdom, and they were very specific in their request to be on the Redcoats team this year,” Gamberg said. “They were very excited about potentially turning the tide.”

Silent Swarm 25 is concluding their operation today. Gamberg says the report will be created to see how the exercise went and whcih technologies were effective.

“We essentially take all the data that we get from the execution of this event and then we turn that into a final report that lets us know what works, what doesn’t work, and those things that we really need to lean into for further development,” he said.

Blace Carpenter can be reached at bcarpenter@thealpenanews.com. This story was produced by the Michigan News Group Internship Program, a collaboration between WCMU Public Media and local newspapers in central and northern Michigan. The program’s mission is to train the next generation of journalists and combat the rise of rural news deserts.