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“The user who is on the ground [control] is flying the aircraft, that user chooses the destination and talks to air traffic control,” said Maxime Gariel, founder and CTO of Xwing, about the N101XW’s semi-autonomous capabilities. year, according to Air
The operator will have to be “someone who knows aeronautical decision making, so if I send this plane, do I send it into a very disruptive environment or not?” -Gariel added. “Am I in a position to let the plane onto the runway, for example? It’s low training.
Xwing has been under contract with the Air Force since last year specifically to “conduct autonomous flight testing and demonstrate capability in an applicable operating environment” as part of a task called Autonomy Prime. The Air Force Research Laboratory’s AFWERX generation incubator is leading the way in Autonomy. Great effort. In June of this year, Joby Aviation, a company primarily focused on the development of electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft, acquired Xwing’s autonomy division.
Xwing’s N101XW, along with other Cessna 208s converted for unmanned operation through another company, Reliable Robotics, participated in the Agile Flag 24-1 exercise, which took place from January 26 to February 1 of this year. Demonstrate the expeditionary and distributed operations concepts that the Air Force jointly calls Agile Combat Employment (ACE), a key objective of Agile Flag 24-1 and Bamboo Eagle 24-3.
At its core, ACE focuses on abnormal and unpredictable deployments to disparate operations locations, aggregating remote locations with limited underdisposition, to disrupt the enemy’s target cycle and decrease their vulnerability. Array ACE is part of a broader trend of the U. S. military. The U. S. is moving toward more distributed operations, which are seen as critical to the fate of any long-term high-level combat, specifically in the Pacific off China. In particular, the United States Marine Corps has reshaped its entire force design around its new concepts of expeditionary and distributed operations.
Although small compared to the Air Force’s existing fleets of delivery aircraft, anything like an unmanned Cessna 208 can still be a useful component of the long-term distributed logistics ecosystem that will be necessary for concepts like ACE’s work. Even deliveries of small shipments can be critical to keeping forces deployed at the forefront.
“There was. . . thousands, perhaps, of C-47s, and they were all over the Pacific [during World War II],” said Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, then head of Pacific Air Forces (PACAF), the Air Force’s top air force. sensible command in the region, he said at a convention in 2022. They weren’t fast, but they can bring a lot of stuff, and they solved the logistical challenge of the Pacific by having a lot of queues for. . . move equipment. . . . it has reached 120, 150 knots. . . [still] worked.
“We may have something like that for ACE, where it doesn’t have to be 500 knots,” but the logistical effort also wouldn’t “consume a lot of tail numbers to be able to get the little pieces of the device. “aircraft and portions in the places from which we intend to deploy,” Wilsbach, who is now head of the Air Combat Command, said at the time. He also noted that those long-term transport planes could simply be. unmanned.
“Can I move goods in a high-risk environment? » but also: “Can I transfer the shipment to a maneuvering unit that does have a runway from which I can operate? “”, General Mike Minihan, now retired. Array, then head of Air Mobility Command (AMC), also asked rhetorically in an interview with Aviation Week last year. Should it weigh 10,000 pounds or 5,000 pounds [in terms of payload capacity]?Can I do vertical lift? Can I do it on an airship [or] on a slow, low-altitude airship?There’s a lot of opportunity in terms of how technically this.
“This generation has very short-term programs for dispersed logistics and supports our ACE concept,” Air Force Maj. Thomas Davis, chief of PACAF’s Future Capabilities branch, also said after a demonstration of Agility Prime. in January. “Autonomous technologies would also alleviate some of the shortage of grunt work in the Air Force. »
At the same time, the US military does not think about how long-term high-level combat in the Pacific could play out through this type of logistics lens. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army already faces the challenge of supporting a gargantuan number of remote installations, adding a constellation of island outposts in the hotly contested South China Sea.
Added to this is the increase in the progression of drone shipments within the Chinese aviation industry, unlike anything seen so far in the United States. Just this week, Chinese drone manufacturer Tengden announced the maiden flight of a new style with a payload capacity of about 4,410 pounds (2,000 kilograms), which is higher than the Cessna 208’s stated “payload. “Tengden had already presented a smaller model. style with a payload capacity of 3,000 pounds. In June, China’s state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation (AVIC) also unveiled the first flight of a new shipment transport drone, the HH-100, which it said had a payload capacity of up to 1,540 pounds (700 kilograms). .
A key aspect here is the existing regulation of the United States’ domestic airspace, which places significant restrictions on where and when drones can operate. The war zone has recently highlighted this truth after the first example of a Scaled Composites model 437 appeared. airplane with cabin. The Northrop Grumman subsidiary and its parent company have in the past described this design as completely unmanned.
By contrast, China’s aviation government has been actively easing restrictions to promote the development of unmanned transport aircraft, ostensibly aimed at the advertising sector, but with clear military potential.
The N101XW’s participation in the Bamboo Eagle 24-3 underscores the U. S. military’s interest in the development of the Eagle. The U. S. Navy is a U. S. citizen in unmanned delivery aircraft, especially for long-term expeditionary and distributed operations in the Pacific. compared to its main global competitor, China.
Contact the author: joe@twz. com