General Atomics to develop autonomous air training
GA-ASI’s MQ-20 Avenger will act as a Red Force. (Photo: GA-ASI)
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) is working on several UCAV programmes as well as a new autonomous training effort.
GA-ASI is to prototype full profile autonomous air-to-air missions to enable current fourth and fifth generation Blue Force fighters to train against robust, autonomous red surrogate platforms.
The effort will see GA-ASI act as lead systems integrator for Project Red 5 which is occurring under Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (OUSD) Project and run by the Test Resource Management Center (TRMC).
Under the US$98 million contract, GA-ASI will operate two of its company-owned MQ-20 Avenger UAS and provide mission autonomy software to integrate, data links and other advanced mission systems.
Project Red 5 is designed to complement GA-ASI’s continued work on UCAV initiatives, which includes autonomy and mission system tests on MQ-20 Avengers and XQ-67A developed by GA-ASI for the US Air Force Research Laboratory.
In addition, the company is prototyping production and flight testing for the USAF Life Cycle Management Center’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft programme.
In March it was reported that the XQ-67A Off-Board Sensing Station (OBSS) developed and built by GA-ASI had flown for the first time. In June 2021, USAF conducted a flight test of its Skyborg autonomy core system (ACS) aboard a MQ-20 Avenger UAV during Orange Flag 21-2 at Edwards AFB, California.
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