Collaborative mission autonomy tested in operational settings during U.S. Army exercise

YUMA PROVING GROUND, Ariz., Oct. 15, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- RTX (NYSE: RTX) businesses, Collins Aerospace and Raytheon, collectively showcased new capabilities at the U.S. Army's Experimental Demonstration Gateway Event (EDGE). These capabilities enabled launched effects to team and execute a mission, merging collaborative vehicle autonomy with human on-the-loop command. Launched effects is a capability term that describes small, uncrewed aircraft that can be launched from the ground, air platforms, or other vehicles.

The RTX team demonstrated two collaborative autonomy solutions to find, fix, track, target, engage, and assess a broad spectrum of threats:

• Collins demonstrated its RapidEdge^TM mission system and software toolset as the "brains" enabling the collaboration between a team of uncrewed aerial vehicles with various payloads that flew as launched effects surrogates.

• Raytheon deployed autonomy capabilities previously developed through the Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment government program and showcased Launched Effects capabilities developed for the combat-proven Coyote? family of unmanned aircraft systems.

Both solutions were able to share data, seamlessly demonstrating the utility of modular open system architectures and mesh networks.

"RTX's demonstration at EDGE showed how autonomous sensing and effects can extend the Army's reach, delivering sensing and effects in anti-access or area denial environments," said Ryan Bunge, vice president and general manager for Collins' C4I&A portfolio. "Leveraging capabilities across RTX, we were able to show interoperability between our collaborative autonomy solutions, demonstrating the power and long-term benefits of open system architectures."

This mission system translated the human operator's primary intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance goals for the team to act on and outline behavioral parameters according to the Army's playbook for mission execution. The team executed the threat detection mission and decided how best to proceed in real-time, even when command links to the ground operators were severed, validating autonomy for launched effects to help the Army advance this critical capability.

The demonstration was sponsored by the U.S. Army Futures Command Future Vertical Lift Cross Functional Team to expand the U.S. Army's targeting, reconnaissance and lethality capabilities through manned and unmanned teaming. EDGE is part of the U.S. Army Future Command's campaign of learning to drive transformational advancement across the Army's modernization priorities.