Air Combat Evolution (ACE) - Technical Area 1: Building Combat Autonomy

DARPA is soliciting innovative proposals for the Air Combat Evolution (ACE) Program Technical Area 1 (TA-1): Building Combat Autonomy: https://go.usa.gov/xdHbB. Technical Areas 2, 3, and 4 were solicited under a previous Broad Agency Announcement. The ACE program aims to increase warfighter trust in combat autonomy by automating aerial within-visual-range (WVR) maneuvering, colloquially known as a dogfight, using progressively more realistic platforms (following demonstrations in modeling and simulation, the program will graduate to live small-scale unmanned aerial vehicles, and culminate on live operationally representative aircraft). The ACE TA-1 BAA specifically solicits the development of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that can conduct aerial dogfighting. A dogfight represents the progression in autonomy from current physics-based automation generally trusted by operators to more complex human-machine collaboration necessary to realize the promise of future manned/unmanned teaming.

A Proposers Day for potential proposers to the Air Combat Evolution (ACE) Tech Area 1 (TA-1) Broad Agency Announcement for building dogfighting algorithms will be held March 26, 2020, in the DARPA Conference Center. For more details visit: https://go.usa.gov/xdHbN

The ACE program is a vital part of the Mosaic Warfare end-state vision: https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/darpa-tiles-together-a-vision-of-mosiac-warfare