US Air Force will be enabling some F-16 Viper fighter jets with the ability to fly themselves.
Dubbed Project Viper Experimentation and Next-Gen Operations Mode (VENOM),
the initiative will outfit six F-16s from Eglin Air Force Base in Florida
with autonomy agents that a human pilot will experiment with in flight.
The aim of the project is to enable the Air Force
to evaluate the most effective way to integrate autonomous and crewed
formations, with the ultimate goal of establishing trust in the autonomy.
The initiative is intended to establish the foundation for the U.S. Air Force's
Combat Collaborative Aircraft (CCA) program, which
will investigate concepts related to tactical collaboration between humans and machines.
In this video Defense Updates analyzes how self-flying F-16 Vipers unlock new potentials
for US Air Force ? Let's get started.
Significant details about Project VENOM were discussed by Air Force officials
during an online webinar focused on Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD)
project hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
Maj. Gen. Evan C. Dertien, commander, Air Force Test Center said,
“Project VENOM right now is bringing in F-16s that will put autonomy on to help
us get after the autonomy that we need to get that into kind of daily operation.
So, I see lots of challenges as far as building this NGAD family of systems, but I also see lots
of opportunities to go deliver something new and innovative that will help out the warfighter.”
He added, “The goal of VENOM is to accelerate in a
couple of areas. One, we're not trying to reinvent something, so we're taking all the work that we've
done before with [the AFRL] with Skyborg, all the work for DARPA, and the other efforts in
getting down on X-62 and trying to get that core autonomy engine that we will now put in an F-16.”
Dertien explained that induction of F-16 into this initiative will provide much greater inputs as
compared X-62 VISTA or Variable-stability In-flight Simulator Test Aircraft,
“The VISTA aircraft is great for the control development and we kind of have the safety
wrapper to develop autonomy, but what we don't have on that aircraft is a lot of sensors. So
by getting [the autonomy engine] on the VENOM aircraft you now have an [active electronically
scanned array] radar, you have electronic warning, you have all those things that can expand your
autonomy algorithm to react to the inputs that it's getting to make decisions for yourself.
It's kind of a next evolution into scaling up what autonomy can do,
and that's what those VENOM aircraft will help us do.”
Dertien added, “And what the F-16 allows us to focus on, since
it's a crewed fighter, we can work on getting the aircraft to and from the airspace to develop the
autonomy there. And also in the airspace to work on the manned teaming and the uncrewed operation.
So, I think it's a natural evolution from everything you've seen before.”
Ultimately lessons learned with X-62 VISTA & F-16 Viper could be incorporated into
other flight experiments like with the stealthy XQ-58A Valkyrie drone.
Maj. Gen. Evan C. Dertien said, “[We could] basically do kind
of [development, security, and operations] there at Eglin to help develop that autonomy,
but all of it is focused on ultimately delivering a CCA capability. And as you get into different
platforms with different capabilities, the goal is to have one core autonomy engine.
We're not investing in different acquisition programs for the autonomy portion.”
It is to be noted in this context that Secretary of the US Air Force Frank Kendall along with
Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology & Logistics Andrew
Hunter recently provided important insights on the US Air Forces plans in a keynote address at
the 2023 Air and Space Forces Association's Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colorado.
Kendall stated US Air Force leadership has "recently given our planners a
nominal quantity of collaborative combat aircraft to assume for planning purposes.
The planning assumption is 1,000 CCAs,"
Project VENOM will also aid in the exploration of the concept
of "tethering" between loyal wingman drones and crewed platforms that they would have
to be linked with through a datalink, as well as its overall architecture.
Maj. Gen. R. Scott Jobe, Director of Plans, Programs, and Requirements,
Headquarters Air Combat Command stated,
“In many cases, we will tether in terms of range and speed and payloads and capabilities.
In other areas, we will untether in terms of geographic location and mission generation,
to complicate both an enemy targeting scheme and what they have to keep track of and battle
track. And then we will be able to congeal our forces to the time and place of our choosing."
He added, "We're going to have the ability
to perform maneuvers in close concert with a fighter type of aircraft or NGAD platform itself.
And then there are other cases where we will have swarms doing things on
a platform-to-platform, CCA-to-CCA, or weapon-to-weapon collaboration level.”
The US has made some significant progress in autonomous flight.
Last December, the X-62A completed a remarkable 17-hour flight with the assistance of autonomy
agents powered by artificial intelligence from the AFRL and the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA). Additionally, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL)
has been utilizing the X-62A to conduct assessments for its Skyborg initiative.
Skyborg is aimed at developing a family of low-cost drones that can be reused,
but are cheap enough so that losses in combat can be financially and operationally tolerated.
A lot of work has gone into Skyborg Autonomy Core System (ACS) which is the AI brain.
Project VENOM is a constituent part of the broader NGAD modernization endeavor that
endeavors to effect significant changes to the Air Force's operational approach,
and it is apparent that autonomy is anticipated to play a crucial role in this transformation.
Although Project VENOM represents a positive step towards advancing the development of
the CCA concept, it is evident that there is still a considerable amount of work to be done.
For Fiscal Year 2024, the US Air Force has requested almost $50 million for Project VENOM.
As assessments are conducted and results are collected, the service will gain a clearer
understanding of how close it is to realizing its ambitious NGAD 'system of systems.'
The initiative will be incredibly complex and a lot of effort will go into it.
It remains to be seen how things will pan out in the coming days.