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Raytheon Technologies company Collins Aerospace has successfully demonstrated advanced AI-enabled communications systems to rapidly distribute data to coalition partners during the second round of the US Indo-Pacific Command’s Northern Edge 2023 exercise series at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan.
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Collins Aerospace, an RTX business, expanded upon the airborne, platform-agnostic data hotspot that the company debuted during the first Northern Edge exercise in Alaska.
Collins successfully connected partners from the Five Eyes alliance, using the company’s ross domain solution, advanced AI-enabled communications, and intelligent gateway technology to the data network, expanding joint force capabilities during the demonstration.
Elaine Bitonti, vice-president, connected battlespace and emerging capabilities for Collins Aerospace, explained, “This was a critical demonstration to prove our solutions can facilitate and enable connectivity for a large and growing joint force network. It’s important to understand that the joint fires data our systems processed and distributed came from a large network of platforms that weren’t originally designed to connect and share data like this.”
RTX’s Raytheon business unit contributed to accelerating decision-making timelines, with an integrated team demonstrating how AI-enabled machine-to-machine communications rapidly delivered threat awareness data from the US Space Force’s Unified Data Library to multiple aircraft, demonstrating how they can be used as connectivity nodes on the battlefield.
Conn Doherty, vice-president of battle management command and control and autonomy solutions at Collins Aerospace, added, “Our automated communications powered by AI securely provided mission data to a number of platforms including C-17s, C-130s, and the KC-135 in a realistic combat scenario. Northern Edge TAC-2 has been a vital proving ground to demonstrate how enabling JADC2 technologies can strengthen the Joint Force and its allies and partners’ readiness to fight and win.”
Expanded connectivity to US Air Force Mobility Command assets was facilitated through an ongoing cooperative research and development agreement between Collins Aerospace and the Utah Air National Guard.
The agreement is focused on extending the utility and survivability of the KC-135 by expanding the role the KC-135 can play on the battlefield as an airborne refuelling and connectivity node.
