US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

In partnership with the Missile Defense Agency, the U.S. Navy deployed the second-generation Standard Missile-3 Block IB made by Raytheon Company for the first time, initiating the second phase of the Phased Adaptive Approach.

"The SM-3 Block IB's completion of initial operational testing last year set the stage for a rapid deployment to theater," said Dr. Taylor W. Lawrence, president of Raytheon Missile Systems. "The SM-3's highly successful test performance gives combatant commanders around the world the confidence they need to counter the growing ballistic missile threat."
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About the Standard Missile-3
The SM-3 does not contain an explosive warhead, but instead destroys the threats using sheer impact, equivalent to a 10-ton truck traveling at 600 mph.

» The program has completed 26 successful intercepts in space.
» More than 180 SM-3s have been delivered to the U.S. and Japan.
» SM-3 Block IB will be deployed ashore in 2015 in Romania.
» SM-3 Block IIA, co-developed with our Japanese partners, will have 21 inch 2nd and 3rd stage rocket motors and a larger, more capable kinetic warhead B

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Jura said:

The retrofit program to upgrade the F-22A to the most advanced planned configuration will carry a $1.5 billion price tag

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thunderchief said:

$1.5 billion just for new software ?

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thunderchief said:

$1.5 billion just for new software ?

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TerraN_EmpirE said:

Nyet,
the Raptor Upgrade for 1.5 Billion is likely to include Helmet mounted Cueing systems, So the Aim9X Sidwinder missile can lock onto targets after launch. Physical Upgrade of Computer, radio's and Radars, Software update, the O2 Generator fix and new set of pink Fuzzy Dice.

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kwaigonegin said:

...

Not sure bout the ground attack role though....call me old fashion but I don't think you should turn the raptor into a ground pounder.

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Navy would pay termination fees for breaking Army helicopter contract
By: JON HEMMERDINGERWASHINGTON DC Source: Flightglobal.com in 3 hours
The US Navy confirms it will pay termination fees that would result from breaking the terms of a helicopter contract between the US Army and Sikorsky.

The confirmation, made to Flightglobal by a Navy official, applies to cancellation fees that would be triggered if the service moves forward with plans to cancel orders for 29 MH-60R Seahawk helicopters in fiscal year 2016.

The plan to cut the 29 aircraft orders was included in the Navy’s fiscal year 2015 budget proposal, which must be approved by the US Congress.

Those helicopters are part of a multi-year procurement contract signed by the Army.

The contract calls for the company to build roughly 650 aircraft between fiscal years 2012 and 2016, including Seahawks for the Navy, Black Hawks for the Army and aircraft for some foreign partners.

The Army told Flightglobal earlier this month that the cancellations would reduce fiscal year 2016 orders to below minimum requirements stipulated in the contract, which would terminate the agreement.

That would trigger terminations fees, says Sikorsky, although the company declines to provide specifics.

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The US Navy has proposed cancelling orders for 29 MH-60R Seahawks, a move that would affect an Army contract for Blackhawks.
The Navy official says the service has “not determined the exact costs and fees associated with a cancellation” and that “cancellation fees would be calculated in accordance with federal acquisition guidelines.”

The official adds that 16 of the 29 cancellations are driven by cuts to the Navy’s carrier air wing, which will shrink if the service retires the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, as it has proposed.

The remaining 13 cancellations are linked to budget cuts to the Navy’s littoral combat ship programme, says the official.

Richard Aboulafia, vice president of consulting firm Teal Group, told Flightglobal earlier this month that terms of multi-year contracts typically make “cancellation financially prohibitive.”

“That way, all the contractors involved feel confident that they can invest in the future, and keep costs down,” he says.

“We've seen this dismal movie before,” adds Aboulafia, noting that in 2005 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reversed a decision to cancel orders for about 60 Lockheed Martin C-130Js that were part of a multi-year contract.

The decision was made because cancellation would cost almost as much as buying the aircraft.

The Navy official stresses that the cancellations are not official and that a decision would be made during the fiscal year 2016 budget cycle, not during current fiscal year 2015 budget negotiations.

The official adds that the fiscal year 2015 budget proposal includes advanced procurement funding needed to maintain the orders.

A cancellation by the Navy could do more than trigger termination fees — it will also impact roughly 60 Blackhawks on order by the Army and at least two MH-60Rs ordered by Denmark under the same contract, says Sikorsky.

If the Navy cancels its order, “the contract vehicle is cancelled,” Tim Healy, Sikorsky's director of maritime programmes, told Flightglobal earlier this month.

“The effect of this is cancelling a contract for Black Hawks,” Healy said.

Maren Leed, senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says on 23 April that the Navy’s cancellation plans may represent a failure by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD).

“Fundamentally, its OSD’s responsibility to sort this stuff out before it submits a budget,” she says during a panel discussion at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC. “These things are supposed to get mitigated in the programme budget review.”

OSD can prevent one service from making changes that negatively affect another, Leed says, or OSD could compensate the Army for financial losses resulting from the Navy’s plan.

It is possible, she adds, that “the budget process has been so incredibly chaotic that [the issue] slipped through the cracks.”

Now the Navy, Army and Congress may all working to understand the financial impacts, Leed says.

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Grounding A-10s will save $4.2 billion, decision ‘clear’: USAF general
By: JON HEMMERDINGERWASHINGTON DC Source: Flightglobal.com 19:43 23 Apr 2014
For months, US Air Force officials have used the adjective “hard” to describe their decision to ground entire fleets of aircraft in response to budget cuts.

But on 23 April, USAF chief of staff Gen Mark Welsh says a review of the service’s options showed “very clearly” that grounding its Fairchild Republic A-10s is the right choice.

Speaking at a National Press Club event in Washington, DC, Welsh says the service evaluated a number of cost-cutting options against a “very detailed operational analyses” before making decisions.

“We came very clearly to the conclusion that of all those horrible options, the least operationally impactful was to divest the A-10,” Welsh says. “It makes perfect sense from a military perspective if you have to make these kind of cuts.”

The service’s fiscal year 2015 budget proposal, which requires Congressional approval, proposes grounding all of its roughly 300 A-10s at a savings Welsh estimates to be $4.2 billion through fiscal year 2019.

The service has said other aircraft can fill the A-10’s close-air support mission, including Lockheed Martin F-16s and F-35s.

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The USAF also considered deferring more planned orders for Lockheed Martin F-35As, but Welsh says that option would drive up the cost of the programme. He adds that the service intends to continue funding other next-generation programmes like the Boeing KC-46 tanker and the long-range strike bomber programme.

Another choice was to cut the fleet of Boeing F-15C fighters beyond the current 51 aircraft on the chopping block.

“We are cutting F-15Cs, but we can’t eliminate the entire fleet or we can’t do the air superiority mission,” he says.

Reductions in funding for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions and for the service’s air mobility fleet were also considered, but Welsh says those missions already face a budget shortfall.

Also on the table: grounding the entire fleet of McDonnell Douglas KC-10 tankers.

“Without the KC-10s, you could [do the job] but it would be ugly and you would not have any flexibility whatsoever,” Welsh says. “The impact of that was simply too big on all the services.”

The same savings could be achieved by cutting three times as many Boeing KC-135 tankers.

“If you take three times as many KC-135s, you flat can’t do the job,” according to Welsh.

Other options included cutting command and control funding or grounding some long-range strike aircraft.

But Welsh says the USAF is the only service that can provide command and control on a “theatre scale”, and he says the US needs 80 to 100 strike platforms in the event of a large-scale war.

“That’s about how many we have today. They are aging, but we have the right number,” according to Welsh.

The USAF has created a transition plan that Welsh says would move other “hardware” into units that currently fly A-10s, but he did not elaborate.

“If we don’t divest the A-10s from those units, the plan will come unraveled…and we will start the planning over again,” he says.

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Uclass Competitors Waiting For Pentagon RFP
By Bill Sweetman
Source: Aviation Week & Space Technology

April 21, 2014
Credit: Lockheed Martin
Boeing and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. (GA-ASI) are working on flyable demonstrators in support of their Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (Uclass) bids, according to industry officials. Boeing is not commenting on its Uclass work, but GA-ASI's candidate for the slow-gelling U.S. Navy requirement is a larger version of its jet-powered Avenger—which, under another previously undisclosed program, is in low-rate production for the U.S. Air Force. Both are expected to be flying by 2015.

One of the other Uclass contenders, Lockheed Martin, says it has no plans to build a demonstrator. The other, Northrop Grumman, is not disclosing details of its Uclass concepts.

A draft request for proposals was under review by senior Navy leadership last week, observers say, and industry had been told to expect it by the end of April. But a battle over basic requirements continues. Some decision-makers advocate a low-risk, less costly Uclass biased toward intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR). Its missions would include providing the carrier with 24-hr. organic ISR, counter-terror operations independent of overseas bases and acting as a tanker.

This view has been endorsed by Adm. James Winnefeld, vice chairman of the Joint Staff, and is supported by some Navy aviators—to some extent, Washington analysts say, because its missions overlap less with strike fighters.

Another faction is still pushing for a Uclass that can perform strike missions against heavily defended targets, over longer distances than Navy fighters, in order to blunt threats such as China's antiship ballistic missile and Russian long-range surface-to-air missiles.

That faction is likely to gain high-level support, since Deputy Defense Secretary-designate Robert O. Work is a founding member. He co-authored early studies that outlined the value of a high-end unmanned aircraft and, as recently as last summer, described the less survivable vehicle as “not what the joint force needs.” In February, during Work's tenure as its chief executive, the Center for a New American Security published a study of options for a future Navy combat air force: Three options recommended delaying the F-35C Joint Strike Fighter and one called for accelerating a strike-oriented Uclass program.

Release of the draft RFP may not be the end of the debate, since industry responses may influence the final document. Reports suggest that the RFP may be classified, ostensibly because it includes stealth performance targets. But as one analyst notes: “What better way to tamp down debate than to put that big red 'S' stamp on it?”

Threshold requirements are relatively firm, but the battle revolves around higher “objective” requirements and the degree to which contractors would be given credit for them, whether in their baseline designs or by providing “on-ramps” in growth plans.

One key question is unrefueled endurance. The Navy has set a requirement to support two unrefueled orbits 600 nm from the carrier, and one orbit at 1,200 nm. However, a report released last week by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, written by veteran USAF strategist Lt. Gen. (ret.) David Deptula, who was the service's chief of ISR programs on his retirement in 2010, and the CSBA's Mark Gunzinger, warned that Uclass could be “so wed to 14 hours' endurance, tied to the carrier deck cycle, that you could end up with an ISR aircraft, with 1,000 pounds of payload or less, and not the low-observable characteristics that you want.” With the MQ-4C Triton in mind, the authors argue that a Uclass optimized for wide-area maritime ISR “would be a redundant capability.”

Publicly, the four contenders are taking two divergent routes. Boeing and Northrop Grumman are tight-lipped, but GA-ASI and Lockheed Martin have shown Uclass designs and given their views on which way the requirement should lean.

GA-ASI's Sea Avenger—with a demonstrator in the works—is a scaled-up version of the land-based Avenger, also called Predator C. A U.S. Air Force order for a single Predator C was announced in late 2011. In December 2011, one of the aircraft was visible on the ground at Kandahar in Afghanistan, on video retrieved by Iran from a crashed RQ-170 Sentinel. However, GA-ASI now says it has completed three Air Force Predator C aircraft, with a fourth under test and due for delivery in the summer.

Sea Avenger is about 10 ft. larger in wingspan and length than the Predator C, making its span around 75 ft. and length at 55 ft., with an estimated takeoff weight of 30,000 lb. or more. The 4,120-lb.-thrust Pratt & Whitney PW545 is replaced by a version of the PW300 family—quite possibly the 6,400-lb.-thrust PW307, already qualified at 51,000 ft. for the Dassault F7X business jet. The weapon bay is 50% greater in volume. It features a retractable sensor ball, a radar and a high-bandwidth satellite communications system.

GA-ASI may have improved the stealth qualities of its design, but is still on the low-cost, long-endurance side of the Uclass debate. The Sea Avenger has hardpoints for external weapons and is designed to carry a buddy refueling pod to act as a “recovery tanker” in support of fighter operations—a mission that requires endurance as well as payload.

Lockheed Martin's Uclass superficially resembles the RQ-170 Sentinel but is much larger. (Although no details of Sentinel have been released, photos suggest that it is very small, possibly with a single 1,500-lb.-thrust Williams FJ33 engine.) The Uclass design has a 66-ft. wingspan with a takeoff weight of 30,000 lb. and has an unidentified commercial engine—its size makes the PW308 and the Global Hawk's Rolls-Royce F137 likely candidates.

Lockheed Martin's studies show that the greatest value for the Uclass is in ISR, according to company program manager Bob Ruszkowski. “We have done a lot of modeling and simulation, and it indicates the greatest value to the air wing is ISR, targeting and strike damage assessment,” he says. “Weaponry is an advantage but it pales in comparison.”

One reason behind that assessment is that the Navy plans no more than six Uclass vehicles per carrier, a minor capability compared with 44 strike fighters. The aircraft has two small weapon bays for light strike against targets of opportunity—a narrow target set. Lockheed Martin proposes that the initial version should be fitted with the F-35's electro-optical targeting system (EOTS) and an electronic surveillance measures system, with a radar to be incorporated later.

Ruszkowski acknowledges that the Navy may push for a better electro-optical package than EOTS, which was designed to a mid-1990s specification and has a single mid-wave infrared sensor. Today's EO turrets and targeting pods feature IR, daytime and low-light video cameras, usually with some degree of fusion and operating in high definition. The company's Uclass concept has an open systems architecture and is designed so that sensors can be integrated easily, he says.

Lockheed Martin does not plan to build a demonstrator, he says: “We've been there and done that.” But industry officials' reports of Boeing's plans to build a Uclass demonstrator were supported in March when the company posted an internal recruitment notice calling for a flight test engineering lead for a Phantom Works Uclass program. Boeing declined to comment, although industry sources have suggested that it is looking at a larger aircraft than some of its rivals, with a novel approach to stealth.

One detail that is apparent on Boeing's otherwise generic Uclass artwork is the cover for a refueling probe. Northrop Grumman also went to the trouble of attaching a probe to the mock-up of the X-47B that it brought to the U.S. Navy League's Sea-Air-Space exhibit. Whether or not these represent signals, they reflect the fact that advocates of a strike-capable Uclass believe that air-to-air refueling is essential to combine heavy payload with long endurance.

Northrop Grumman is not saying much more than Boeing about its Uclass plans, despite its experience on the carrier-capable X-47B. However, one company executive notes that the design will depend on the way that the requirement is written, and that it will be “too late to start designing” after it appears. This may imply that the company is currently supporting more than one design. “Not all the competitors” may stay in the program after the requirements are set, the Northrop Grumman executive says.

Finally, one industry investor and long-time observer warns that “this program is absolutely guaranteed to generate protests and one or more prolonged lawsuits,” adding that “the requirements are bound to significantly favor one or more candidates, because each team designed to a different interpretation of what the customer wanted, and now the customer essentially has to declare which was right, before the competition even starts.”

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Demos Show Rapid Advance In Autonomous Rotorcraft
By Graham Warwick
Source: Aviation Week & Space Technology

April 21, 2014
Credit: U.S. Navy
Among flying machines, helicopters would seem to require more piloting than most, as they operate at low altitude, close to terrain, obstacles and other hazards. But research into applying autonomy to rotorcraft is making rapid progress, with several key unmanned-helicopter demonstrations in recent weeks.

On March 11, Sikorsky and the U.S. Army showed that a minimally trained ground operator could command an optionally piloted UH-60 Black Hawk to pick up, move and set down an external load. Over two weeks in February, Aurora Flight Sciences, Lockheed Martin and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) showed that unmanned helicopters could respond to a request for resupply, avoiding obstacles and selecting safe landing sites autonomously.

Additionally, the Sikorsky Autonomous Research Aircraft (SARA) has received its optionally piloted vehicle (OPV) experimental certificate from the FAA, allowing the modified S-76 to begin unmanned flight tests under a company-funded program to develop autonomy technology for vertical-takeoff-and-landing aircraft that can be FAA-certified.

The rapid technical progress in helicopter autonomy is being fueled by the promise of increased mission capability, safety and reliability, and reduced pilot workload. “Rotorcraft operate at low altitude in an obstacle-rich environment. It is very challenging, but if we can bring autonomy and optionally piloted capability to helicopters, we will get the highest returns,” says Mark Miller, vice president of research and engineering at Sikorsky.

Under the Manned/Unmanned Resupply Aerial Lifter (Mural) program with the Army, Sikorsky flew its optionally piloted Black Hawk demonstrator on a cargo logistics mission at its test site in West Palm Beach, Fla. A flight engineer with minimal training, using a backpack ground control station, was able to run the mission from start to finish, says Igor Cherepinsky, chief engineer for autonomy.

“The person running the mission did not care that it was a helicopter,” he says. The ground operator maneuvered the Black Hawk to pick up the 5,000-lb. load with point-and-click commands and a “coarse beeper” joystick similar to that used by a crane operator. With the load attached, he then entered a simple flight plan and pressed a button to send the Black Hawk to its destination, where another operator took over, repositioned the helicopter and disconnected the load.

A UH-60MU fly-by-wire (FBW) test aircraft was modified with the data link and software required for optionally piloted operation. A downward-looking belly camera was added to give the ground operator a view of the load. “We designed the interface without the pilot in mind,” says Chris Van Buiten, vice president of technology and innovation at Sikorsky. “The operator was just doing the cargo crane part. It was transparent to him how the aircraft flew.”

The next step is a 2015 demonstration of manned-unmanned teaming between the optionally piloted Black Hawk and a large unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) developed by Carnegie Mellon University. The two machines will collaborate to deploy, operate and retrieve the UGV, says Van Buiten.

ONR's Autonomous Aerial Cargo Utility System (Aacus) program aims to take autonomy all the way to landing. Under Phase 1, which ends this month, Aurora and Lockheed Martin demonstrated that a minimally trained field operator could request a resupply flight via handheld tablet, and an unmanned helicopter equipped with the Aacus package would respond, navigating to the requested location, avoiding no-fly zones and obstacles, and selecting a safe landing site autonomously.

In demos at Quantico, Va., Aurora flew its Aacus package on Boeing's H-6U Unmanned Little Bird, while Lockheed used the Kaman K-Max already performing unmanned cargo missions in Afghanistan. Both helicopters were fitted with electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) and three-dimensional lidar sensors, autonomy processors performing onboard path and trajectory planning, and interfaces to the flight controls.

Where other demonstrations of autonomous landing-zone selection have allowed the aircraft to overfly and survey the site before landing, Aacus is required to evaluate the requested location and, if necessary, select safer alternates as the aircraft flies in. Aacus is intended to work with any helicopter, regardless of size or performance, but the ultimate goal of being able to land within 2 min. from 5 nm away means the system must be capable of selecting a safe landing site while approaching at over 200 kt., says Jon McMillan, Lockheed vice president for K-Max business development.

“Time is a function of the helicopter, not the Aacus system,” says Max Snell, ONR program manager. “But we constrained the response time so they would not hover and stare at the landing site. We did not want to give an inordinate amount of time to the perception system. We wanted them to proceed and approach as would a piloted aircraft.”

In the demo scenario, the field operator used a pull-down menu on a tablet to send a request for a resupply flight to the main operating base. There, the ground control station uploaded the mission plan to the aircraft, which took off and switched to autonomous mode. At the start of final approach, the helicopter autonomously contacted the field operator and requested permission to land. Given the go-ahead, Aacus began assessing the landing site using the lidar.

“If there were obstacles, the system would offer up alternatives,” says Jon Wissler, Aurora director of aerospace systems. The alternatives were displayed on a map on the tablet and the operator picked one. “The operator does not have to know what the helicopter is capable of,” he says. “They can pick what's good for them, and the helicopter can say it's not interested; here are some alternatives.”

The ability to select a landing site from incomplete data is key to Aacus. “The system has to make a decision without having perfect data; that's what makes this relatively unique,” says McMillan. “It's about how you put all that intelligence on board so it can land in the presence of uncertainty.”

The system's world model is continuously refined as it approaches the landing zone and sensor data improves. “At long range, it uses lower-resolution two-dimensional EO/IR to get an idea. As it gets closer, it builds a higher-resolution model using 3-D lidar to get a detailed map,” he says. But the result is a probabilistic view of the world. “The onboard autonomy has to deal with the uncertainty and reduce it as the aircraft comes in to get to a point where it can decide to land.”

At Quantico, the helicopters navigated autonomously around no-fly zones, both those entered before launch and those sent by the field operator while the aircraft was inbound, indicating pop-up threats and requiring the aircraft to replan its approach. “This is real-time trajectory generation, not just waypoint to waypoint,” says McMillan. “This is real-time sense-and-avoid, and reacting to pop-ups.”

At least one team is expected to go ahead to Phase 2 of Aacus. The next step is to expand capability and test in more stressing environmental conditions. The goal is to improve the capability to detect and avoid small obstacles, including power lines, to operate in different types of obscurants and precipitation, and demonstrate the system's ability to function in a GPS-denied environment. The next flight demo is expected in 2015. A third phase would involve porting Aacus to a different helicopter to prove that it is platform-agnostic, as intended.

Sikorsky, meanwhile, is taking a similar platform-agnostic, open-architecture approach to its company-funded Matrix Technology autonomy development program. Both the S-76 SARA and optionally piloted Black Hawk have similar FBW systems, and the next phase of the Mural program will see the autonomy high-performance computer used in SARA installed in the optionally piloted Black Hawk.

SARA first flew in July and initially focused on testing the full-authority FBW system installed in the S-76 testbed. “At the end of 2013 we entered Phase 2, involving autonomy, artificial intelligence and perception,” says Cherepinsky. “Several [EO and lidar] sensors were installed in the aircraft to provide all-round obstacle avoidance and situational awareness.”

The S-76 then flew “open loop” to collect sensor data and test the discrimination algorithms. “Now we have our FAA OPV ticket and are about to start flying the algorithms closed-loop,” he says, meaning the autonomy system will fly the aircraft. Flights are planned over Connecticut and New York, where there is “interesting terrain” ranging from forests and mountains to lakes and ocean.

The plan is to demonstrate autonomous cargo, medevac and other missions. These will involve SARA taking off from an airport, avoiding traffic and obstacles and behaving like a piloted aircraft, flying into an area with a variety of terrain and hazards, and arriving in a constrained area where a user is waiting. The aircraft will fly toward the requested location, scout for landing zones, communicate any constraints to the user and be redirected or allowed to land.

“We make the machine aware of what the mission is,” says Miller. “If it is medevac, they have to bring the casualty to the aircraft, so a viable landing zone has to allow access. The system takes that into account when evaluating landing sites.”

Piloted flights have shown the system can pick suitable sites. “SARA has flown over, selecting landing zones open-loop in an obstacle-rich environment. Then the pilots go over, select sites and would agree with the system,” says Van Buiten. “In some cases, flying open-loop at 1,000 feet, the pilots would say no way that's a landing zone, then they would drop down and see they really could land there,” says Cherepinsky.

Sikorsky is working closely with the FAA with the goal of developing autonomy that is certifiable. Autonomy produces behavior that is emergent, not deterministic, and cannot be predicted with the certainty required by certification authorities. “Most of the algorithms have emergent behavior, and there is no way to certify them by conventional methods,” he says.

The company's approach bounds the emergent behavior of the high-level intelligence algorithms with low-level, deterministic intelligence that can be certified conventionally. “The boundaries are not just spatial, they are also temporal, and involve an understanding of airspace and traffic,” says Cherepinsky.

Sikorsky is not waiting for an opportunity to develop an unmanned rotorcraft and has already received FAA certification for a rig-approach “autonomy app” for the S-92. “We are looking for the next set of apps. We are thinking of one for the Black Hawk to do the cargo mission. We do not have to have fly-by-wire to bring on FBW-like apps,” Miller says. “We think there are fairly near-term opportunities to field these kinds of apps, commercial and military.”

Watch videos of the two Aacus demonstrations and see Sikorsky's S-76 SARA testbed fly at: ow.ly/vUduc

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Darpa's Alias Aims To Automate Existing Aircraft
By Graham Warwick [email protected]
Source: AWIN First

April 21, 2014
Credit: Darpa
With sophisticated autonomous capabilities under development for unmanned aircraft, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) wants to bring high levels of automation to existing manned aircraft to reduce pilot workload while increasing mission capability and safety.

The agency has scheduled a proposers’ day for May 14 in Washington to brief potential bidders on the new Aircrew Labor In-cockpit Automation System (Alias) program, which aims to demonstrate a drop-in, removable kit that would enable operation with fewer crew on board.

Whereas previous “virtual co-pilot” programs such as the Rotorcraft Pilot’s Associate of the 1990s focused on using artificial intelligence to provide decision support to the human pilot, Alias is intended to be capable of executing a planned mission from takeoff to landing.

“Our goal is to design and develop a full-time automated assistant that could be rapidly adapted to help operate diverse aircraft through an easy-to-use operator interface,” said Daniel Patt, Darpa program manager, adding this would transform the pilot from system operator to mission director. The portable kit would control sufficient aircraft functionality to permit the automation to manage the complete flight, including handling contingency events such as systems failures, allowing the operator to act as a mission commander, Darpa says in its proposers’ day notification.

“Alias should present a high-level, latency-tolerant interface to a human supervisor to enable operation and foster effective human-machine collaboration. For example, simple touch and voice interfaces may enable supervisor-Alias interaction,” the agency says.

Darpa expects system capabilities such as persistent state monitoring and rapid procedure recall to increase the safety of existing aircraft. Rotorcraft manufacturers like Sikorsky are already looking at adding autonomy to existing helicopters to increase safety and mission capability.

The research agency identifies three critical technical areas for the program, including minimally invasive interfaces between the Alias kit and an already certified aircraft, to speed the development and fielding of automation.

The other areas are acquiring knowledge of aircraft operations so that the Alias toolkit can be adapted rapidly to different platforms, and a human interface in which an operator provides replanning input and mission supervision and is not involved in lower-level flying tasks.

Darpa envisions a series of progressive systems demonstrations, beginning on the ground, progressing to flight, involving porting the Alias kit to a different aircraft type, and culminating with a “robust demonstration” across an entire flight.

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