Autonomous Convoy Simulation to Help Combat Pilots Training

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The US Air Force has awarded a contract to three companies to jointly develop and demonstrate fully autonomous targets. The targets are ultimately intended to simulate convoys of multiple vehicle types moving at speed to provide a high level of realism for pilots during targeting and strike training and munition capability assessment missions.

US company Mountain Horse Solutions and two groups from the United Kingdom, tpgroup and Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE), together have been awarded a nine-month contract to develop and demonstrate fully autonomous targets to the United States Air Force. 

Under the agreement, the Mountain Horse Solutions team will develop and build a prototype target which will be demonstrated to the USAF in Spring 2021. The target will be developed using innovative technology including DCE’s Marionette system that can convert any vehicle to autonomous use, and tpgroup’s North path planning software. These technologies are commercially proven and are being modified to meet the needs of the USAF, according to their announcement.

The technology is expected to have benefits in how training realism takes place for combat pilots, ensuring the USAF maintains its surveillance, targeting, and lethality advantage over our adversaries.

One of the challenges the team will have to cope with is that the autonomous targets have to function in a GPS-denied environment. 

Initially, the kit will be used on Humvees or similar vehicles and will eventually represent wheeled and tracked vehicles, including Chinese and Russian armored fighting vehicles and artillery and air-defense systems, according to the contract opportunity posted on the US federal government’s beta.SAM.gov website in December 2019.