The AIR program is developing dominant, super intelligence (SI)-driven tactical autonomy for multi-ship, beyond-visual-range (BVR) air combat missions. Autonomy solutions will be developed and demonstrated on crewed F-16 aircraft as part of the U.S. Air Force’s Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Operations Model – Autonomy Flying Testbed (VENOM) program. Following VENOM test flights, these capabilities will transition to support future increments of autonomous collaborative platforms (ACPs).
Many outstanding challenges to develop and deploy tactical autonomy stem from operations in complex, real-world environments.
AIR is focused on critical research dimensions that must be addressed to enable tactical autonomy in operationally relevant combat: fully integrated sensors, scalability to larger engagements, dynamic adaptability across changing platform envelopes and open-world conditions, and the ability to learn predictive models that incorporate uncertainty as well as adversary deception.
To solve these challenges, AIR injects existing, maturing, and emerging algorithmic approaches with expert human feedback to rapidly evolve cooperative, autonomous behaviors capable of real-time adaptation in contested airspace.
Fundamentally, AIR addresses two core technical areas:
- Developing SI-driven approaches that enable real-time, distributed autonomous tactical execution and collaborative decision-making within uncertain, dynamic, and contested operational environments.
- Engineering the hardware, high-performance computational processing, and software development pipelines needed to rapidly design, test, field, and reconfigure future iterations of advanced autonomous capabilities as operational needs evolve.
AIR builds on the within-visual-range (WVR) autonomy pioneered under the Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program, advancing into the BVR domain and demonstrating autonomous teaming on uncrewed platforms. Through advanced modeling and simulation alongside rigorous live-flight testbeds, AIR delivers resilient, dominant SI-agents for BVR missions across current and future autonomous fleets.
Editor’s note: On Nov. 12, DARPA updated the program name from Artificial Intelligence Reinforcements (AIR) to Adaptive Injection of Reconfigurable Super-Intelligence (AIR) in accordance with Executive Order (EO) 14434. Per the EO, historical documents will remain unchanged.
