Autonomous Air Platforms

Happy Tuesday everyone! Welcome to the Autonomous Platforms of the Future Newsletter, designed to inform you about future game changing products, technologies, and platforms. This week I'll be focusing on highlighting an Autonomous Air platform that will be changing how the future wars will be fought.

Introducing General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. (GA-ASI) the Gambit series of autonomous aircrafts. GA-ASI, an affiliate of General Atomics, is a leading designer and manufacturer of proven, reliable remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) systems, radars, and electro-optic and related mission systems, including the Predator® RPA series and the Lynx® Multi-mode Radar. With more than seven million flight hours, GA-ASI provides long-endurance, mission-capable aircraft with integrated sensor and data link systems required to deliver persistent flight that enables situational awareness and rapid strike.

Gambit is a suite of aircraft, with multiple variants that can be finely tuned for the most particular and demanding missions. This starts with a core platform that encapsulates a single set of common hardware: landing gear, baseline avionics, chassis, and other essential functions. A common Gambit Core accounts for the majority of the price among the various models, providing an economy of scale to help lower costs, increase interoperability, and enhance or accelerate the development of variants. The Gambit Core establishes a common baseline, then takes on its mission and identity with the addition of different engines, fuselages, wings, and other internal and external characteristics.

Gambit 1 is a nimble sensing platform optimized for long endurance. The aircraft can accompany other unmanned aircraft or join with human-crewed aircraft on the leading edge of a strike package, serving as the initial eyes and ears for the air group.

Gambit 2 adds the provision for air-to-air weapons. The characteristic outer mold line means the aircraft has less endurance than its pure play reconnaissance sibling

Gambit 3 looks much like Gambit 2, only optimized for a complex adversary air role. This aircraft will support sorties against some of the most capable U.S. systems, including U.S. integrated air defense systems, along with other current 5th-generation tactical air assets.

Gambit 4 is a combat reconnaissance-focused model with no tail and swept wings. This aircraft is optimized for long-endurance missions of a specialized nature, leveraging low-observable elements and other advanced systems for avoiding enemy detection.

GA-ASI are fielding this aircraft to US Government customers as the future of Collaborative Combat Aircrafts (CCA). CCAs are gaining a lot of traction with government customers in 2024.

Recently, the US Air Force announced that five companies are in the running for the CCA drone wingman program. Boeing, General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and startup Anduril are the pool of vendors so far selected by the Air Force for an early stage of the CCA program.

For those that don’t know, CCAs are autonomous vehicles that can perform different missions, ranging from carrying weapons and flying ahead of other aircraft to provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and relay valuable early warning and evade detection, to electronic warfare and striking targets either on their own or in accordance with the rest of the force.

These CCAs will comprise a new breed of significantly less expensive and highly autonomous, mission-focussed, unmanned collaborative combat aircraft to fly along with fifth-generation and newer human-crewed fighter jets.

GA-ASI is projecting first flight of the new Gambit aircraft for the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) in the first half of fiscal year 2024 (FY24) under the Low-Cost Attritable Aircraft Platform Sharing (LCAAPS) program focused on building several aircraft variants from a common core chassis.

I think GA-ASI are creating something that will be great for the Aerospace & Defense industry. The common core is something to be excited about if you're government customers as it allows flexibility in the various use-cases for the vehicle while also keeping costs to a minimum.

These platforms are extremely important to the government as technology is rapidly advancing for the military. As you’ve seen in recent wars, the countries controlling the most power will be the ones with the most technology advancements. These platforms and vehicles will shape how future wars and intelligence will be conducted.

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