
The U.S. Air Force on Sept. 29 awarded a second round of contracts to nine organizations for the service's Skyborg program--an effort to develop a family of attritable drones with a common artificial intelligence backbone that can train alongside manned aircraft and eventually help complete tasks, fly ahead of Air Force pilots in non-permissive environments, and create headaches for U.S. adversaries. Skyborg is one of three Air Force Vanguard programs to accelerate the fielding of new technologies. On Sept. 29,…