US Air Force drones fly coordinated air combat manoeuvres for the first time, Shield says

Several uncrewed aircraft in the US Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft programme flew in formation and performed coordinated air-to-air manoeuvres for the first time on 26 October, Shield said. They used the company's Hivemind software to manoeuvre together and practise tactics against airborne threats beyond visual range.

The flight followed an 8 October demonstration in which a pilot in an airborne F-22 directed a single FQ-44A Fury with high-level instructions. Hivemind turned the instructions into actions in real time, and the Fury manoeuvred and carried out simulated combat tasks as the pilot directed.

Under the Air Force's Autonomy Government Reference Architecture, standard interfaces keep mission software apart from functions specific to each aircraft, which Shield said makes it easier to add capabilities and keeps suppliers competing. The aircraft in the tests run the same core software Shield has put into more than 40 uncrewed systems on land, at sea, in the air and in space.

Todd Wesley, Shield's vice president of Hivemind engineering, said the combined release process for Hivemind and the aircraft software is close to letting the Air Force “fly a sortie, update the software overnight and fly again the next day.” Shield plans more tests with the Air Force and will feed the flight data into later versions of the software.