Distributed Swarm Coordination Strategies for Cooperative Deployment of Long-Range Loitering Munition Systems in GNSS-Degraded African Operational Environments

Abstract

Distributed swarm coordination architectures are increasingly enabling effective deployment of long-range loitering munition systems through cooperative search, adaptive strike timing, and resilient reconnaissance–strike convergence across contested electromagnetic environments. Coordinated unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms provide scalable surveillance coverage, dynamic task allocation, and improved navigation robustness under degraded Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) availability, particularly within infrastructure-limited operational theatres. Simulation-based evaluation indicates surveillance-coverage improvements of approximately 38%, task-allocation responsiveness gains of 31%, and localisation-stability enhancements of 27% relative to non- cooperative deployment architectures. These results establish a practical autonomy baseline for distributed reconnaissance–strike convergence operations across extended African operational corridors.