The 805th Combat Training Squadron’s Shadow Operations Center-Nellis and the U.S. Army’s Mission Command Battle Lab have conducted a technology assessment under a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency-backed program designed to facilitate airspace deconfliction and operations in a contested battlespace.
DARPA’s Air Space Total Awareness for Rapid Tactical Execution program seeks to automate the capability to come up with a single operational picture of airspace to help speed up joint-fires execution, the Air Force said Saturday.
In February 2021, DARPA tapped Raytheon Technologies to build an artificial intelligence tool meant to address airspace deconfliction under the ASTARTE initiative.
The Raytheon contract led to the development of the Airspace Tactical Automation System, also known as ATLAS.
“To aid in the product development and maturation of ATLAS, the ShOC-N collaborated with the MCBL to organize, plan, and test a simulated battlespace designed to replicate airspace complexities inherent in a joint area of responsibility,” said Lt. Col. John Ohlund, 805th CTS commander.
“The ShOC-N’s modeling and simulation team utilized Modern Air Combat Environment to transmit blue air tracks over the Army Persistent Experimentation Network to the MCBL,” added Ohlund.
The joint battle labs expect the next evaluation of ATLAS to occur in the fall of 2022 and to have an integrated simulation and modeling environment that includes a set of software platforms, dubbed as Theatre Battle Management Core Systems, used to plan and carry out military aerial missions.