The Department of the Air Force’s innovation arm has begun seeking new technologies and capabilities designed to fulfill the requirements of a new Prime program that aims to develop and implement autonomous systems for national security applications.
AFWERX, a division within the Air Force Research Laboratory, has launched the innovative capabilities opening, or ICO, for Autonomy Prime to facilitate partnerships with the private sector to enable rapid testing and deployment of commercially developed emerging autonomous technologies, AFRL said Wednesday.
The ICO will include several autonomy topic calls in the future to address key technology gaps identified by AFWERX.
“Stemming from the successes of Agility Prime, we surveyed emerging tech markets and created a new Prime focused on autonomy because we recognized a need across the Department of the Air Force,” said Lt. Col. Bryan Ralston, AFWERX Autonomy Prime branch chief.
Autonomy Prime centers around four lines of effort to achieve its objectives, starting with establishing a proving ground at Duke Field, Florida, dedicated to testing and experimenting with autonomous technologies and capabilities.
“By employing a trusted ‘sandbox’ environment, we will be able to accelerate emerging technologies more rapidly because we won’t have to go through a test approval process every time we discover a bug in an algorithm,” Ralston said.
