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USAF’s Special Ops Autonomy Push Looking Toward Air-Launched Swarms
USAF personnel load Anduril Altius 600 UAS for a 2023 Adaptive Airborne Enterprise demonstration.
FORT WALTON BEACH, Florida—U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command is looking to go big with a new autonomy effort, moving from solely focusing on using MQ-9 Reapers as host to its C-130 variants.
The command for the past two years has been working on its Adaptive Airborne Enterprise (A2E) effort, which would use Reapers to air-launch smaller uncrewed air vehicles (UAV) to allow one service member to operate multiple UAVs at once. Command officials say they want to get beyond this “myopic” view and shift A2E to platform-agnostic, with the ultimate hope of air-launching swarms from other platforms, including pallets on MC-130s or wing-mounted pods on AC-130 gunships.
The command last year demonstrated MQ-9s air-launching smaller UAVs, using the Golden Horde autonomy system to control four of the systems. While four is not a full “swarm” yet, it is more than one, officials argue.
“We’ve got to establish some wins and some successes in what we’re trying to do right now before we go too broad,” AFSOC Commander Lt. Gen. Michael Conley tells Aviation Week at the Special Air Warfare Symposium here.
The goal now is to provide some “limited combat capability” within the next two years, he says.
While the command does not want to get away from using MQ-9s, the size of the Reapers limits what can be carried. Pallets on MC-130s, for example, could air-drop dozens of UAVs to provide surveillance, electronic warfare, electronic attack or other capabilities at a much larger scale. The palletized air-launch focus could look similar to Rapid Dragon, the AFSOC and Air Mobility Command program to air-launch cruise missiles using a pallet in the back of a cargo aircraft.
AFSOC bought three General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. MQ-9Bs in 2023 for its effort. Demonstrations have shown their effectiveness, though the autonomy is not “there yet” and needs to be matured, Conley says.
The effort is a collaboration between AFSOC, U.S. Special Operations Command’s Program Executive Office-Fixed Wing and the Air Force Research Laboratory, which developed the Golden Horde software.
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