Layne Merritt, head of U.S. Army’s Aviation Development Directorate, said the service plans to conduct a series of demonstrations for a new fleet of air-launched unmanned aircraft in the coming years, Defense News reported Tuesday. The service looks to develop a capability to deploy drones from a larger aircraft and perform advanced manned-unmanned teaming for reconnaissance, surveillance, long-range targeting, attack, decoy, resupply and casualty evacuation missions.

“This is a new class of weapon system,” Merritt told Defense News. “The cool thing about the air-launched effects is that now, instead of standoff jamming or standoff effects, we can have stand-in effects. Instead of being 100 kilometers away… we may be 100 meters away, and that’s going to change the type of payloads, but also may be more effective.”

He noted that the Army will work with industry to develop the air-launched drones. The service plans to begin testing the unmanned aircraft this fall aboard a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter flying at a lower altitude, about 100 feet or less, Merritt said. 

The next demonstration is expected at the end of fiscal year 2020, where the Army will deploy an unmanned “mothership” with multiple air-launched drones for reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition. An autonomous attack demonstration, testing of decoys and electronic warfare capabilities and integrated air defense system interference would follow by FY21 and later years. 

The U.S. Navy demonstrated the use of a prototype virtualization-driven missile defense system during an exercise off Virginia’s coast. Guided missile destroyer USS Thomas Hudner used the Aegis Virtual Twin system to destroy an incoming target, verifying the missile defense platform’s capacity to operate with radars and missiles, Naval Sea Systems Command said Tuesday.

The Virtual Twin serves as a prototype of the future Aegis Virtual Combat Management System. The Navy’s Program Executive Office Integrated Warfare Systems equipped USS Thomas Hudner with a small-sized version of the virtual twin. Future versions of the system would be small enough to allot space for more technologies aboard the ship.

“Delivering warfighting power to the hands of our sailors is our mission, and breaking the paradigm of hardware-software dependent deliveries is a major step toward rapidly delivering that warfighting power,” said Capt. Todd Boehm, major program manager for the Aegis combat system.

Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology developed a toolkit to improve safety tests for software used in critical activities such as transport and power plant operation, NIST said Tuesday. The Automated Combinatorial Testing for Software toolkit enables software developers to mitigate the input of simultaneous code combinations which may result in critical glitches that pose threats to safety. 

NIST is working to integrate ACTS, which deploys a new version of the Combinatorial Coverage Measurement tool, with an algorithm developed by Austria-based SBA Research that can process input variables of up to five-way combinations. The algorithm, used together with ACTS, can extend the latter’s variable capacity to thousands.

“We can apply this method to more applications and systems that previously were too hard to handle. We’d invite any company that is interested in expanding its software to contact us, and we’ll share any information they might need,” said Richard Kuhn, a computer scientist for NIST.

Recently, Adobe used NIST and SBA Research’s software testing algorithms to conduct reliability assessments for one of the company’s software packages.

The U.S. Air Force is partnering with Purdue University and the University of Notre Dame in Indiana to expand its testing facilities for future hypersonic technologies, Military.com reported Tuesday. Air Force spokesperson Ann Stefanek said the universities will build “quiet wind tunnels” to reduce free stream disturbances and for more accurate aerothermodynamics predictions.

Purdue and Notre Dame operate one hypersonic testing tunnel each and are developing additional facilities with the Air Force’s fiscal 2018 and 2019 funds. Notre Dame opened its first quiet, Mach 6-capable tunnel in November and plans to build tunnels to produce Mach 8 and Mach 10 flight speeds.

Purdue University is working with a team led by the University of Dayton Research Institute on a $9.8 million hypersonic research funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory.

Air Force Secretary and 2019 Wash100 Award winner Heather Wilson said the service also started upgrading systems at Arnold Air Force Base in Tennessee, which operates over 55 aerodynamic and propulsion wind tunnels, rocket and turbine engine test cells.

Autonomous Solutions performed a two-day site survey to secure information in line with their performance of automated efforts at the Precision Impact Range Area in Edwards Air Force Base. John Streets, a member of the 412th Range Squadron, said in a statement published Tuesday that the company will develop a technology to push automated vehicles to carry out convoy operations on target acquisition tests.

Streets added that the firm plotted the area’s pathways and validated key locations for the installation of a mesh radio network with the use of the Vehicle Automation Kit, a tool that works to control a platform’s gear selector and steering wheel via actuator boxes.

“Our vision is to take the man out of the loop; get the operators out of the driver’s seat and automate that technology to use the manpower in other ways,” Streets said.

In addition, Streets noted that the company will deliver prototype applications to help the PIRA team familiarize with the technology.