Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm confrontation will be an important combat mode for UAVs in the future. It is coordinated airborne dogfight between two adversary UAV swarms when one side attempts to intercept the other. UAVs in the conflict have the abilities of self-organization and self-adaption and the property of human-like thinking. By sensing environment, UAVs can evaluate their surrounding situation and take actions to their advantages, like target attack, evasion, separation, concentration, coordination, fire support, etc. according to their behavior regularities. The interaction process between UAVs and environments, as a whole, exhibites nonlinear dynamic characteristics UAV swarm confrontation is a nonlinear dynamic complex system and also is an emerging research field, therefore, it has received extensive attention. This paper reviews the recent research advances on UAV swarm confrontation, analyzes and summarizes its key techniques as well as discusses related study thoughts and approaches. The paper is also expected to be a reference to the research of modeling of UAV swarm confrontation.

unmanned aerial vehicle  /  swarm confrontation  /  air combat modeling  /  complex system