General Atomics has been contracted to turn a pair of MQ-20 Avenger drones into surrogate adversary autonomous aircraft for a Pentagon training program.
The MQ-20s will be modified with advanced sensors, data links, and mission systems, enabling them to act as advanced air-to-air threats to current fourth and fifth generation US fighters.
The $98-million prototyping effort is contracted by the Test Resource Management Center (TRMC), an arm of the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
“GA-ASI (General Atomics) has continued to invest and deploy our open architecture autonomy ecosystem integrated with best-of-breed mission systems,” GA-ASI VP for Agile Mission Systems Jeff Hettick said.
“We are thrilled to partner with TRMC to bring these capabilities that create operationally relevant Red Air surrogates and significantly improve Blue Force mission success in realistic air-to-air training scenarios.”
Revives Canceled AFRL Program
Project Red 5 revives a US Air Force adversary air training program that was canceled in 2023 and has its funds diverted to the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program, according to Aviation Week.
American firm Blue Force Technologies was contracted to supply four drones for the Bandit program to act as adversaries for US fighter pilot training.
Blue Force was later acquired by Andrunil and the Bandit drone was offered for one of the two Increment 1 CCA development contracts.
