Airbus teams up uncrewed aircraft Primoco UAV to fly joint surveillance missions
Dear colleagues,
In a recent test flight campaign, Airbus demonstrated how its teaming intelligence software can be used to autonomously and dynamically manage a group of uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) in real time. Thanks to this, operators on the ground or pilots in crewed aircraft can operate multiple UAVs simultaneously, relieving them from tedious tasks such as surveillance and inspection over vast areas and allowing them to focus on mission objectives.
Airbus teaming intelligence software enables scalable and extendable platform-agnostic teaming
Airbus conducted the demonstration at the Czech airport of Písek-Krašovice together with Primoco, a leading manufacturer of medium-sized UAVs. In one scenario, operators at the Airbus ground station sent two Primoco One 150 UAVs to a predetermined target area. Airbus' teaming intelligence software assigned each of the UAVs its own surveillance area. Using AI-based automatic target recognition (ATR) software by Airbus, both aircraft were able to detect threats simultaneously. One of the uncrewed aircraft then localised a threat and sent the geodata of the opposing air defense system along with an alert to the ground station.
In a second scenario, each of the uncrewed aircraft were given separate tasks. One UAV was responsible for monitoring the target area and detecting threats with Airbus’ AI-based ATR. The other loitered in the background on standby. As soon as the first UAV detected an enemy threat, it used the teaming software to task the second UAV to identify the threat (an enemy air defense system) with Airbus’ AI-based ATR and report it to the operators at the ground station. Meanwhile, the first UAV continued monitoring the area for suspected threats.
In the demonstration, Airbus and Primoco also successfully tested the integration of third-party applications other than Airbus’ own ATR. As the focus was to demonstrate the scalability of the teaming intelligence software to any UAS independent of manufacturer and its extensibility to other applications, the response to the threat was not part of the flight tests. However, the threat could have been neutralised by a pilot in a fighter jet using targeting data from the UAVs.
Next steps: productisation of teaming intelligence software
Following the successful demonstration in Písek-Krašovice, Airbus is now working on the next steps: to further mature its teaming intelligence software as a product that can be installed on any fixed-wing, rotary-wing, crewed or uncrewed aircraft available on the market. The same goes for the integration of third party software components such as automated target recognition. This will also enable teaming intelligence outside of combat applications, for instance, for critical infrastructure inspections.
In previous flight test campaigns, such as one conducted in 2022, Airbus already demonstrated the large-scale interaction of multiple crewed and uncrewed platforms, known as Manned-Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T). You can find more information here. In October 2024, Airbus and European partners also demonstrated how helicopters and uncrewed systems from different manufacturers can work together, learn more here. Applying MUM-T to manufacturer-agnostic crewed and uncrewed platforms will also help to increase the number of sensors and effectors within a future combat air system.
More information
Find out more on Teaming here.
Media contact:
Christian Dörr
Airbus Defence and Space
+49 (0)170 560 2668
christian.doerr@airbus.com
