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General Atomics Aeronautical Systems has revealed the successful autonomous flight of the MQ-20 Avenger jet.
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems’ (GA-ASI) milestone achievement in the successful autonomous flight of the MQ-20 Avenger jet has highlighted the success of this aircraft as a seamlessly integrated mission element that has the capacity to leverage multiple capabilities to achieve the best outcome.
Once the jet was airborne, the ground team were able to confirm that the transfer between mission autonomy and flight autonomy had been made, marking a major achievement for this aircraft and GA-ASI.
“One of the highlights of the demonstration was the MQ-20’s use of a live infrared search and track sensor from Anduril to passively range a live target aircraft in flight,” the company said in a statement.
“Using this sensor data, the autonomy system independently established a track, calculated an intercept solution, and simulated the firing of a weapon at a live target, showcasing the ability of autonomy to close on a target using onboard sensors and its own logic, without human intervention.
“The simulated shot, if real, would have destroyed the target.”
A major element of the flight was the human-machine interface which is the technological bridge between ground teams and autonomous aerial systems
The flight followed a predesigned route “in which the aircraft pauses and orbits, as real human pilots frequently do on real missions, before continuing to another waypoint or objective”. Heading, speed and altitude measures were all achieved.
Last year, GA-ASI teamed up with Shield AI for flight demonstrations of the Avenger aircraft, using Shield AI’s Hivemind mission software.
