Lockheed Martin successfully completed a demonstration of manned and unmanned aircraft collaboration as one of the advanced command and control concepts it is developing for its Unmanned Combat Armed Rotorcraft (UCAR) program.
The goal of UCAR is to demonstrate the technical feasibility, military utility, and operational value of an unmanned rotorcraft system capable of autonomous collaboration with manned and unmanned air and ground systems. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing the UCAR system jointly with the U.S. Army.
The demonstration simulated an operational mission involving multiple UCAR vehicles and one Longbow Apache helicopter flown by an Army pilot. The demonstration invlved testing of advanced ground- and air-based command and control concepts as well as Lockheed Martin's collaborative autonomy design.
"The simulated vehicles successfully demonstrated all of our command and control concepts and also performed successfully against scenarios provided by U.S. Army personnel," said Jeff Bantle, vice president, Multi-Mission Solutions for Lockheed Martin Systems Integration - Owego. "Of particular importance, the demonstration showed the manned and unmanned systems' ability to function as a team, and the UCAR systems' capacity to adjust dynamically and autonomously to changes in conditions."