By Allyson Park
TAMPA, Florida — Special Operations Command is modernizing its fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft to include more autonomy and modular open systems architecture in response to the rapidly evolving operational landscape.
The modernization of its aviation portfolios comes at a time when Special Operations Command is facing “the most complex, asymmetric, challenging threat security environment many of us have seen in over 30 years of service,” Army Gen. Bryan Fenton, SOCOM commander, said in a keynote speech at the recent SOF Week conference. “The pace of technological change is unlike anything we’ve seen.”
To adapt to the pace of technological innovation on the battlefield, the command is focused on increasing autonomy and modular open systems architecture on its aircraft, said Lt. Col. Andrew Sturgeon, mobility division chief in the command’s Program Executive Office Fixed Wing. The goal is to reduce crew error and workload, ensure maximum flexibility for missions and foster seamless integration with partners and allies.
Lt. Col. Benjamin Toler, division chief for emerging technologies at PEO Fixed Wing, said the command is developing and looking for autonomous capabilities to “enhance mission effectiveness and enable new operational concepts” with software platforms and provide enhanced survivability and situational awareness.
One of the “flagship” programs of record is Air Force Special Operations Command’s Adaptive Airborne Enterprise, or A2E, said Col. T. Justin Bronder, program executive officer for PEO Fixed Wing.
The goal of the program is to deliver an interoperable system of systems that enables intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities through expendable autonomous small uncrewed aerial platforms, resilient data paths and common control architecture.
The A2E program is currently doing some “good pathfinding” with the MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft, enhancing it with “a suite of additional systems, autonomy and integration,” Bronder said. It’s “very much just a pathfinder as we expand those networked, interoperable capabilities, launched effects, autonomy [and] updated human-machine interface, proliferating that … as we keep these legacy assets in the fight” and modernize them to meet the demands of Special Operations Command and the Joint Force as the battlefield continues to evolve.
Through the Adaptive Airborne Enterprise, the command is also looking to utilize “any kind of government architectures where we can for common areas like autonomy,” Bronder said. “The problems they’re tackling” in other offices “for autonomy maybe look a little bit different than what you’ve heard here, but I think there is some mutual lift in terms of leveraging similar architectures.”
Additionally, Air Force Special Operations Command currently has an assessment event underway with Special Operations Command’s innovation arm, SOFWERX, to accept, evaluate and scale down 60 white papers from industry partners on some “really niche, focused autonomy solutions” that the service can readily integrate into its current software-defined kit for the Adaptive Airborne Enterprise, Bronder said.
At press time, the assessment was not completed, but there are “potentially” more to follow, Bronder said. He urged industry partners to “keep an eye out for SOFWERX, for those types of solicitations as we open the aperture for teaming, for potentially new partners to help us solve some concrete, tactical problems in the space of autonomy and small [uncrewed aerial systems] as well.”
SOCOM’s autonomous capabilities will be “underpinned” by modular, open mission systems architectures, which will improve interoperability between platforms, facilitate rapid technology insertion and maximize flexibility and affordability for fixed wing and rotary wing platforms, keeping them “adaptable and capable in the face of evolving threats,” Toler said.
Lt. Col. Thomas Brewington, product manager of MH-47 at Program Executive Office Rotary Wing, said the pursuit of open mission systems is one of his biggest priorities, but it’s not just about incremental improvements; it represents a “fundamental shift” in how modernization is approached at SOCOM.
“We’re moving beyond traditional upgrades and embracing a more agile and adaptable approach [to] capability development and integration,” he said. Success is “the continued partnerships that we have between the program office and industry partners.”
The command needs industry to provide solutions that don’t depend on a vendor-specific stack of hardware and/or software. The more modular open architecture solutions the service can leverage to facilitate rapid upgrades, the better, Bronder said.
“We’re looking for capabilities that can integrate [and] can continue to integrate across platforms,” he said. “We are doing more and more work now across the program executive offices, so, again, really leveraging their capabilities, their architectures that they’re defining, … making sure we’re getting things that are interoperable across various systems.”
For example, the Adaptive Airborne Enterprise is working to increase modularity and integration with other program executive offices and partners. The program will “hopefully” move into working with and modernizing crewed platforms in addition to autonomous capabilities, “pretty much anything,” said Brandi Evans, division chief for airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and non-standard aviation systems at PEO Fixed Wing.
“It should be hardware-agnostic, platform-agnostic, because it is very tied to other PEOs like [SOF Digital Applications] and the architecture that they provide within their autonomy efforts,” she said. “Our software then will [enable] us to collaboratively work within an environment. Because at the end of the day, as we push things out from a permissive environment, we want to be able to have command and control at whatever level needs command and control, whether it’s on the ground, whether it’s in other air platforms, whether it’s in a maritime vessel.”
As Special Operations Command’s aviation portfolios adopt new autonomous capabilities and modular open systems architectures, the most significant challenge they face is the amount of work it takes to ensure legacy systems are interoperable and able to communicate effectively through the proper channels, Toler said.
For example, uncrewed aerial systems must be compatible and able to cross-talk with existing platforms or systems within different program offices and services, he said.
“We have to evaluate the UAS capabilities, the [command and control] and then take a look at the architectures that are resident and figure out what else are we trying to do and accomplish?” Toler said. “And that results in a significant amount of legwork in determining the trade space over how much more do you invest in the legacy system to ensure a certain compatibility with what you’re trying to accomplish, or is there a sweet spot where you have just enough?”
Additionally, the command is working on so many capabilities concurrently across various mission systems, portfolios and focus areas that it struggles to consider interoperability and the integration of future upgrades early enough in the development and acquisition process, Sturgeon said.
“Some of the challenges in the past that’s really plugged [up] the program is just making sure that we’re considering integration early and that we’re not stovepiping systems, whether it’s real estate on the aircraft, [ensuring] interoperability between all these various systems, just trying to get ahead of that earlier,” he said.
Lt. Col. Seth Green, division chief for Silent Knight Radar/CV-22 at PEO Fixed Wing, said that while the command is “always looking at” how to improve its aircraft with upgrades like new sensors and open mission systems, the end users will also inform how those systems are ultimately used on the battlefield.
“This is why I love working with SOF, because you make something really cool or something that’s really, really good, and then our aviators take that, and then they find new ways to make it better, and they use their skill sets that they have honed over decades of flying, and they use it in ways you never expected that you could use that equipment,” he said.
While the introduction of autonomous capabilities and modular open systems architectures into the fleet may be recent, the goal is still the same as it has always been, said Steven Smith, SOCOM’s program executive officer for rotary wing platforms: make sure special operators never “face a fair fight.”
“That’s [our job,] to make sure that we’ve got the technical overmatch, so that we never fight a fair fight, so that our warfighters are always going in with an advantage,” Smith said. “We field and sustain the most advanced … capability in the world, and we do that through the integration of that unique hardware” and software.