Autonomous Government Funded Projects

Happy Monday everyone! Welcome to the Autonomous Platforms of the Future Newsletter, designed to inform you about future game changing products, technologies, and platforms. It's been great to get back to writing this document after a mini hiatus as my family welcomed my daughter into the world recently. This week I'll be introducing a new series of topics to be discussed over the next few releases. The series will be called "Government Exploration" and each week I'll highlight major government agencies advancing autonomous platforms in the Aerospace & Defense (A&D) industry.

The topic for today's release will focus on Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). I'm excited to get this series kicked off and let you all know everything that's going on from a government aspect for autonomous platforms.

The demand for new advanced autonomous capabilities continues to grow with the majority of newly released government budgets supporting this plan. The Government Series will highlight the key plans, projects, platforms that each US Department of Defense agency is working on for advanced technology capabilities.

For those that don't know much about the department of defense, the agencies I'll cover will be as follows:

• US Army

• US Navy

• US Air Force

• US Space Force

• Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

• Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)

• Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA)

• Defense Logistics Agency (DLA)

These are just a few of the numerous agencies that are helping to advance future government technologies.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. The purpose of DARPA is to make pivotal investments in breakthrough technologies for national security.

DARPA’s research portfolio is managed by six technical offices charged with developing breakthrough technologies and additional offices that manage special projects and the transition of DARPA-funded technologies into Department of Defense capabilities. These offices include the Defense Sciences Office (DSO), the Information Innovation Office (I2O), the Microsystems Technology Office (MTO), the Strategic Technology Office (STO), the Tactical Technology Office (TTO), and the Biological Technologies Office (BTO).

DARPA has a portfolio of programs that cover an enormous about to topics. The staple for a typical project is that it takes on high risk to yield high rewards/payoffs for technology advancements. Programs usually start and stop frequently due to the changing needs of the government to operate DARPA in a fast paced environment.

All in all, DARPA is typically at the forefront of pushing the envelope of technology for the various government entities.

DARPA's mission is to maintain the technological superiority of the U.S. military and prevent technological surprise from harming our national security by sponsoring revolutionary, high-payoff research bridging the gap between fundamental discoveries and their military use. DARPA has a strategic relationship with each of the defense agencies as the research it does helps quickly advance the technology and systems each will use for future missions.

Given the high importance of Autonomous capabilities in the government, DARPA is helping pave the way for these technologies to come forward for support of all major military applications. These programs cover the Air, Lance, Sea, Space, and Cyber domains; but also have other high interest topics for the industry.

AdvaNced AirCraft Infrastructure-Less Launch And RecoverY (ANCILLARY) - aims to develop and flight demonstrate an X-plane with the critical technologies required for a leap-ahead in long endurance, vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) unmanned air system (UAS) performance.

Longshot - The objective of the LongShot program is to disrupt the paradigm of air combat operations by demonstrating an unmanned air-launched vehicle capable of employing current air-to-air weapons, significantly increasing engagement range and mission effectiveness.

OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) - This program envisions future small-unit infantry forces using swarms comprising upwards of 250 small unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) and/or small unmanned ground systems (UGSs) to accomplish diverse missions in complex urban environments.

Hunter - This program seeks to develop an innovative concept for the delivery of advanced undersea payloads from extra-large unmanned underwater vehicles (XLUUVs). The Hunter program will be executed in phases. Phase 1 seeks to design and build the payload delivery device to fit inside a government-provided payload module. Phases 2 and 3 aim to support integration of the payload delivery device into the XLUUV and perform testing.

Speed and Runway Independent Technologies (SPRINT) - The SPRINT project is a joint DARPA/U.S. Special Operations Command effort that aims to design, build, and fly an X-plane to demonstrate the key technologies and integrated concepts that enable a transformational combination of aircraft speed and runway independence. The SPRINT X-plane is intended to be a proof-of-concept technology demonstrator and its flight test program seeks to validate enabling technologies and integrated concepts that can be scaled to different size military aircraft.

Currently, there are two companies that are performing Phase 1B of the contract – Aurora Flight Sciences and Bell Textron, Inc.

Oversight - DARPA, the U.S. Space Force, and the Space Development Agency (SDA) are developing new satellite constellations to increase the tactical capabilities of U.S. space systems, however new methods are needed to effectively leverage them.

Oversight seeks software solutions to enable autonomous constant custody, or knowledge of target location within accuracies necessary for mission needs, of up to 1,000 targets from space assets through management of available satellite hardware resources. The project aims to support both peacetime and wartime monitoring of high value targets in contested environments where resources and targets may be highly dynamic.

Manta Ray - The Manta Ray program seeks to demonstrate critical technologies for a new class of long duration, long range, payload-capable UUVs. If successful, this new class of UUV will give the combatant commander an amplification of capacity without disrupting current operations by remaining independent of manned vessels and ports once deployed.

For a list of all active and archived DARPA programs, see the below link.

I’ll keep my takeaways brief for this week. The major takeaway this week is the introduction of the Government Exploration series. This will provide folks a deep understanding of the government agencies and how Autonomous platforms assist in successful mission execution.

While the importance of autonomous technologies seems to be growing by the day, the military and government applications of such platforms will be endless. DARPA continues be at the forefront of new development programs which is amazing to witness from my career experiences. One of the great aspects of DARPA is the pace at which their projects/programs move to support key government capabilities for national security.

The Government Exploration series will continue next week with a discussion about the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and how Autonomous technologies are helping achieve their objectives.

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