Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), US Air Force Test Pilot School and Calspan Corporation successfully demonstrated manned/unmanned teaming to improve combat efficiency and effectiveness for the warfighter.

“This demonstration is an important milestone in AFRL’s maturation of technologies needed to integrate manned and unmanned aircraft in a strike package,” said Captain Andrew Petry, AFRL autonomous flight operations engineer. “We’ve not only shown how an unmanned combat air vehicle can perform its mission when things go as planned, but also how it will react and adapt to unforeseen obstacles along the way.”

During the flight demonstration, an experimental F-16 aircraft acted as a surrogate unmanned combat air vehicle autonomously reacting to a dynamic threat environment during an air-to-ground strike mission.