A pilot in a supersonic stealth fighter aircraft, F-22 Raptor, controlled an MQ-20 Avenger drone from the jet’s cockpit during a demonstration in October—a crewed-uncrewed teaming that may become key feature in military operations in the future as unmanned warfare is increasingly becoming the norm.
General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, which is the the prime contractor for the F-22, and L3Harris Technologies, collaborated on a flight test that successfully demonstrated crewed-uncrewed pairing using an F-22 Raptor fighter jet and an MQ-20 Avenger unmanned jet.
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“We recently teamed Avenger with a badass fighter jet for a true airborne, crewed-uncrewed internal demo, where the human pilot commanded the autonomous Avenger from the cockpit for a hypothetical mission,” TWZ quoted General Atomics spokesperson C. Mark Brinkley as saying.
According to media reports, the flight, which took place at the Nevada Test and Training Range, has offered a preview of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) capabilities of the US Air Force.
L3Harris’ BANSHEE tactical datalinks were integrated with its Pantera software-defined radios (SDRs) using Lockheed Martin’s open radio architecture, allowing seamless communication between the fighter jet and the drone.
The test flight showed the use of non-proprietary, US government-owned communications systems and proved that mission hardware can be flown, transitioned, and reused across platforms.
General Atomics said the demonstration is part of an ongoing series of flight demonstrations performed using internal research and development funding to showcase “the art of the possible” between manned and unmanned teaming.
“The MQ-20 Avenger, tricked out with mature mission autonomy software, is a perfect CCA surrogate and allows us to move fast and move first,” a General Atomics spokesperson has been quoted as saying, adding, “We already know the F-22 will play a critical role in crewed-uncrewed teaming operations, and General Atomics is in a unique position to get this started now.”