Coders In Fighter Squadrons Likely Coming As Drone Revolution Looms
Story by Joseph Trevithick • Saturday
Senior U.S. Air Force officials have provided new details about the service's vision for integrating an evolving set of autonomous capabilities onto new uncrewed aircraft, as well as the groundwork that has already been laid through various recent testing initiatives. The Air Force views advances in autonomy as absolutely at the core of its plans for a forthcoming fleet of drones designed to work collaboratively with crewed platforms.
However, humans are expected to remain heavily 'in the loop' for the foreseeable future when it comes to certain sensitive tasks, especially decisions about whether or not to employ lethal force. To program all this, fighter squadrons could end up with coders and data scientists rapidly reprogramming autonomous drone brains between missions.
Lockheed Martin concept art showing an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter flying with various types of unmanned aircraft. Designs shown here could be among those that the Air Force will consider as part of a planned competition to acquire advanced drones to work collaboratively with manned aircraft.
This new information about what the Air Force is currently referring to as the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) effort came during a roundtable at the Pentagon that The War Zone and other outlets attended yesterday. CCA is a part of the Air Force's broader Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program, which includes work on advanced stealthy crewed and uncrewed aircraft, as well as sensors, networking and battle management capabilities, weapons, next-generation jet engines, and more, as you can read more about here.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/coders-in-fighter-squadrons-likely-coming-as-drone-revolution-looms/ar-AA14jBnC?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=77472511cb2f4cb98a93b80dc29b095f
