SBIR-STTR Award

The deployment of swarming unmanned systems is the next DoD Offset Strategy. War-winners will need to harness the tactical surprise that hundreds of highly automated aircraft can provide to maintain information dominance and air superiority. Significant R&D efforts are ongoing across the DoD to further the technical feasibility of swarm deployments and this proposal is designed to tackle the more practical (and significantly under-studied) series of problems that must be addressed prior to any swarm assets being deployed into the AOR. The ultimate question that SWORmBAT is designed to answer is: “How many of which types of unmanned assets, in what configurations, are required to cover the Area of Operation over the Time on Station and when must they be deployed, relieved on station and recovered given the environmental, mission and risk parameters?” This convoluted query is fundamental to logistical, mission, risk and resource planning for swarm operations. Most current research efforts are focused on how the multitude of autonomous elements will perform once deployed: they start with a premise such as “X UAVs over a YxZ NM area”. SWORmBAT aims to define the number X given the Y, Z and related parameters, such as: Number / size of Objectives & Named Areas of Interests (NAI/AOI) Mission requirements and payloads Time on Station (TOS) requirements Distance from Launch/Recovery (LR) sites Endurance and time/distance graphs of swarm assets Weather forecast during deployment window Anticipated defenses and mission risk levels Maximum number of assets available. Deciding on the number, type, Standard Conventional Load (SCL), level of automation and mission of these myriad assets is a daunting planning and resource allocation task. Planning efforts for a similar number of manned assets in such a complex scenario is a manpower-intensive and time-consuming operation: a dedicated Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) has a team of 100+ Joint personnel working on matching targets and intelligence gathering objectives to 80 or so different aircraft types, and then coordinating their missions to meet air refueling, defensive support and target deconfliction needs. It is an incredibly convoluted process that takes years of corporate knowledge and extensive individual training to master. Despite all of this, the Air Tasking Order (ATO) cycle still takes three days (72 hours) to coordinate just one mission. The number of variables for any given swarm mission are equal to or greater than the CAOC’s list of considerations for a large-force Combined Air Operation (COMAO). Due to their particular nature, swarm planners require their own CAOC-type system, but on a localized, forward-edge of the battle area, scale and operating on significantly shorter timeline than the current 72-hour ATO cycle. SWORmBAT is designed to provide Swarm planners, operators and technicians with an end-to-end resource planning tool that equates to a "CAOC in a Container".

BLUF: Air Commons™ - Swarm takes command tasking, integrates mission-critical planning factors, and generates a ‘Swarm ATO’ with resource allocation, asset-to-target matching, force management and mission control, allowing swarm commanders and tacticians to deploy and control overwhelming autonomous air power inside of the enemy’s OODA loop. The deployment of swarming assets is the next DoD Offset Strategy. War-winners will need to harness the tactical surprise that hundreds of highly automated aircraft can provide to maintain information dominance and air superiority. In Phase I, SWORmBAT® uniquely developed the ‘left of launch’, ‘CAOC-in-a-Container’ approach to answer: “How many, of what type, when and for how long? It rapidly became apparent that these questions were part of a ‘Bigger Play’ to ensure successful swarm deployment. That larger program is the basis of this proposal under the working title Air Commons™ - Swarm. Once again, this RDT&E project is back-boned on the Air Commons™ Deployable Unmanned Traffic Management (D-UTM) system that was developed for unmanned Disaster Response and Contingency Operations and is central to SWORmBAT® operations. This spiral will design and build a “Swarm Engine” to take the mission-dictated resource and planning model from SWORmBAT®, translate the recommended assets, SCLs, launch and Relief-on-Station schedules, and directly deploy the swarm squadrons on mission. The end result of this program will be a Pre-Production Prototype of a swarm planning, management and control system: Air Commons™ - Swarm.