Technology for Enriching and Augmenting Manned - Unmanned Systems
Abstract
The Technology for Enriching and Augmenting Manned - Aircraft (TEAM-US) project seeks to increase lethality, survivability, payload, and reach of combat aircraft by: (i) teaming them (wingmen) with advanced Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), and (ii) enabling swarming employment and operations of manned and unmanned airborne systems. The synergy between the mission tailored UAV wingmen and the less survivable, but decision making manned platforms will provide access to contested airspace and enhance force projection. UAV wingmen will reduce air dominance lifecycle costs by dramatically reducing training costs. Legacy manned platforms will train with virtual unmanned teammates saving operations, maintenance, and logistics costs associated with manned wingmen. Unmanned wingmen can be developed for a wide variety of missions including penetrating intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), electronic attack (EA), and weapons delivery. Mixed operations of manned and unmanned systems in a swarming configuration can be developed to support missions against networked-integrated air defenses and to support operations in highly contested environments. A common core will enable reduced development and integration costs. Finally, leveraging existing platforms for command, control, and battle management recapitalizes existing investments, making these 4th and 5th generation platforms viable participants in future anti-access, area denial scenarios where they may have limited survivability. Balancing in situ battle management with highly capable, mission specific unmanned teammates will offset new threat technologies, enabling more cost effective mission execution, and increasing the survivability of the manned platform team leader.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Accomplishment
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2016
- Source ID
- fda12edeb83fe1f7602761b42e194a7d