The U.S. Air Force’s innovation arm, AFWERX, released an Innovative Capabilities Opening for Autonomy Prime on Jan. 31 to develop low-cost autonomous technologies for the service and to conduct a small drone fly-off at Duke Field, Fla., focusing on navigation systems that provide an alternative to GPS, if the latter is jammed or unusable.
Autonomy Prime is to build upon the commercial electric vertical takeoff and landing-focused Agility Prime effort, which began in 2020. Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter gave Autonomy Prime the go-ahead last April.
Autonomy Prime is to focus on industry risk reduction to accelerate the transition of promising technologies into Department of the Air Force programs of record after testing at the Autonomy, Data and AI Experimentation Proving Ground–the “Autonomy Proving Ground”–at Duke Field near Eglin AFB, Fla.
Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) said that, in preparation for the fly-off, companies are to submit their offerings by Aug. 1.
“AFWERX Prime has taken the lessons and successes from Agility Prime and expanded with the addition of Autonomy Prime,” AFMC said on Jan. 31. “Autonomy Prime has been deeply exploring autonomy technologies to better understand their maturity and relevance to the Air Force mission set and investment portfolio, and has formed the following conclusions–technological dominance in autonomy and associated sub-technologies will be critical to the future success of the United States Air Force as well as the United States at large; the USAF acquisition and test enterprise is and will continue to face challenges regarding the resources, expertise, and experience developing and fielding autonomous capabilities to match the expected future demand or needed pace of development; [and] there exists outside of the traditional DOD industrial base and AF investment or R&D portfolios, an enormous quantity of valuable existing autonomy technologies as well as expertise and resources to develop additional technologies.”
Companies chosen for the Autonomy Proving Ground fly-off at Duke Field may incorporate a range of innovations in their offerings, including visual reference, inertial, timing propagation via signals, magnetic, and solar/astrological guidance, AFMC said.
While DoD’s Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) Oversight Council has focused on moving ahead on the anti-jamming, anti-spoofing, encrypted GPS M-code signal, the Pentagon should prioritize GPS alternatives, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has said (Defense Daily, Aug. 17, 2022).
“Should GPS be unavailable for any reason – terrain, weather, technical failure or active adversary action – the loss of the system would be deleterious to the success of any operation,” AFMC said in the fly-off notice. “This is particularly true for small unmanned systems, which typically rely on GPS as their only navigation solution due to Size, Weight, Power, and Cost (SWAP-C) constraints and do not have the luxury of onboard human operators as contingency.”