New ABMS exercise will include SpaceX, live fires

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“The event that we have coming up April 8 is going to be massive,” Air Force Assistant Secretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Will Roper said at a media roundtable at the Pentagon. Among the new test elements will be live-fire exercises such as taking down an unmanned aerial vehicle, a cruise missile shootdown, and service-wide activities taking place all across the country, including at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, Nellis AFB, Nevada, Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, and White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico.
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Space X’s Starlink satellites will participate “to a greater degree” in the April exercise, and hopefully connect to additional air- and land-based platforms, Roper said. The Air Force is in talks with Virgin Orbit about including the company’s LauncherOne two-stage orbital launch vehicle in the exercise. “It helps [the company] because they’re thinking through” concepts of operation, Roper said. “It helps us think about, how would the force be different if we’re able to launch satellites on demand?”

As a result of the December demonstration, Air Mobility Command is considering placing the GatewayONE translator on a KC-46A Pegasus aerial refueler, “and hanging it on the tanker so that the tanker can become a translator and has a different role on the battlefield,” he added. “That’s something that wouldn’t exist right now had the first demonstration not been done.”

Last time SpaceX's Starlink sent data to an AC-130. The pesky satellites-on-demand pops up again... One might be forgiven for thinking we're afraid of losing our big money space assets and their related-capabilities for some reason...

Nellis, Eglin, White Sands and YPG all have nearby weapons ranges. I'm curious who the shooters and who the eyeballs will be, and what route the data is transmitted, but it sounds like their are going to try to stress test it a bit and push some limits.

Not mentioned in the article, but I happen to know that the Kratos Valk equipped with "Skyborg" will participate with the LPI Gateway.

Jane's

Northrop Grumman has offered a battle management command and control (BMC2) prototype to the US Air Force (USAF) for use in the development of its Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) Internet-of-Things (IoT) combat concept.

This prototype, called Distributed Autonomy/Responsive Control (DA/RC), was originally developed 15 years ago for the company’s work on the US Navy (USN) X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstrator (UCAS-D) programme.

Rescheduled for June, pending COVID-19 situation.

Aahh the X-47B..So much wrapped up in a project that the Navy went NOPE!!!!!
Good to see bits of here still living

a reply to: Blackfinger

After J-UCAS died it was never going anywhere serious.

a reply to: RadioRobert

Satellites on demand. NIRTSats.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: RadioRobert

Satellites on demand. NIRTSats.

So wheres the Megafortress and the Vampire?

a reply to: neformore

The Vampire was canceled after the prototype burst into flame from the power requirements.

Will the Cheetah be photo chase plane on this exercise?

Hahaha The Dale Brown fans are killing it in this thread