Six F-16s Getting Autonomous Computer Brains For Combat Drone Trials

To lay the groundwork for the U.S. Air Force’s Combat Collaborative Aircraft (CCA) program, which will explore tactical human-machine teaming concepts, the service will be giving select F-16 Viper fighter jets the ability to fly themselves.

Dubbed Project Viper Experimentation and Next-Gen Operations Mode (VENOM), the initiative will outfit six F-16s from Eglin Air Force Base in Florida with autonomy agents that a human pilot will experiment with in flight. The hope is that the project will allow the Air Force to assess how it can best bridge autonomous and crewed formations while building trust in the autonomy. This is a major issue for the USAF's future manned-unmanned teaming hopes, which you can read all about here.

New details about Project VENOM were discussed by Air Force officials on Monday during an online webinar focused on Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. The panel of generals from across the service explained to attendees how Project VENOM will help work autonomy into more routine testing as well as refine what is expected of the aircraft developed under the CCA program. The CCA effort seeks to produce at least 1,000 autonomous drones with high autonomy that can work as 'loyal wingmen' alongside and network with crewed aircraft, like the future NGAD platform. 

“Project VENOM right now is bringing in F-16s that will put autonomy on to help us get after the autonomy that we need to get that into kind of daily operation,” said Maj. Gen. Evan C. Dertien, commander, Air Force Test Center. “So, I see lots of challenges as far as building this NGAD family of systems, but I also see lots of opportunities to go deliver something new and innovative that will help out the warfighter.”

“In many cases, we will tether in terms of range and speed and payloads and capabilities,” said Maj. Gen. R. Scott Jobe, Director of Plans, Programs, and Requirements, Headquarters Air Combat Command. “In other areas, we will untether in terms of geographic location and mission generation, to complicate both an enemy targeting scheme and what they have to keep track of and battle track. And then we will be able to congeal our forces to the time and place of our choosing."

"We're going to have the ability to perform maneuvers in close concert with a fighter type of aircraft or NGAD platform itself," Jobe added. "And then there are other cases where we will have swarms doing things on a platform-to-platform, CCA-to-CCA, or weapon-to-weapon collaboration level.”

Ensuring trust between humans and machines is also a critically important factor in realizing the CCA concept. Project VENOM could support this need simply by allowing pilots to fly with the flight autonomy cores that could equip the drones they may one day be fighting alongside. 

“It goes back foundationally to that trust in autonomy, right? This is where it starts now,” said Brig. Gen. Dale R. White, Air Force program executive officer for Fighters and Advanced Aircraft. “We're going to integrate into the F-16. We're going to start practicing with our algorithms … leveraging all of those things and the previous work that's been done understanding that foundationally we'll have that autonomous engine and then we’ll have to continue algorithm development.”

While the emergence of Project VENOM appears to be a step in the right direction in terms of progress on developing the CCA concept, the consensus still seems to be that there’s a lot of work left to do. The Air Force has requested nearly $50 million for Project VENOM in Fiscal Year 2024, and as evaluations are carried out, the findings gathered will provide a better idea of just how close the service is to establishing its ambitious NGAD ‘system of systems.’

“There's a lot of data to collect through VENOM, and I think that is an important key, is how do you collect data while it's in flight and then leverage that to develop the next generation of autonomy based on what the pilots and the machines are doing together,” said Maj. Gen. Heather L. Pringle, commander, Air Force Research Laboratory. “And so again, to me, it's all about the data and developing that autonomy core system.”

Project VENOM is just one piece of the larger NGAD modernization effort that is aimed at making transformational changes to how the Air Force operates, and autonomy is clearly expected to be a critical part of the evolution.