Selection Made for Advanced Air-to-Air Autonomy Prototyping

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) has been awarded a contract as Lead Systems Integrator for Project Red 5 to prototype advanced autonomous air-to-air capability to provide adversary or “red” air training profiles.

The contract for the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (OUSD) Project, run by the Test Resource Management Center (TRMC), is worth $98 million.

GA-ASI will operate two of its company-owned MQ-20 Avenger® Unmanned Aircraft Systems and provide mission autonomy software that integrates cutting-edge sensors, data links and other advanced mission systems. 

Project Red 5 will prototype full profile autonomous air-to-air missions to enable current fourth and fifth generation Blue Force fighters to train against robust, autonomous “red air” surrogate platforms.

Project Red 5 will complement GA-ASI’s continued work on Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) initiatives, which includes autonomy and mission system tests on MQ-20 Avengers, XQ-67A developed by GA-ASI for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), and prototype production and flight testing for the U.S. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program.

Jeff Hettick, GA-ASI vice president for Agile Mission Systems, said, “GA-ASI has continued to invest and deploy our open architecture autonomy ecosystem integrated with best-of-breed mission systems. 

“We are thrilled to partner with TRMC to bring these capabilities that create operationally relevant Red Air surrogates and significantly improve Blue Force mission success in realistic air-to-air training scenarios.”