ACE: Air Combat Evolution

The ACE program seeks to increase trust in combat autonomy by using human-machine collaborative dogfighting as its challenge problem. This also serves as an entry point into complex human-machine collaboration. ACE will apply existing artificial intelligence technologies to the dogfight problem in experiments of increasing realism. In parallel, ACE will implement methods to measure, calibrate, increase, and predict human trust in combat autonomy performance. Finally, the program will scale the tactical application of autonomous dogfighting to more complex, heterogeneous, multi-aircraft, operational-level simulated scenarios informed by live data, laying the groundwork for future live, campaign-level Mosaic Warfare experimentation.

In a future air domain contested by adversaries, a single human pilot can increase lethality by effectively orchestrating multiple autonomous unmanned platforms from within a manned aircraft. This shifts the human role from single platform operator to mission commander. In particular, ACE aims to deliver a capability that enables a pilot to attend to a broader, more global air command mission while their aircraft and teamed unmanned systems are engaged in individual tactics.

ACE creates a hierarchical framework for autonomy in which higher-level cognitive functions (e.g., developing an overall engagement strategy, selecting and prioritizing targets, determining best weapon or effect, etc.) may be performed by a human, while lower-level functions (i.e., details of aircraft maneuver and engagement tactics) is left to the autonomous system. In order for this to be possible, the pilot must be able to trust the autonomy to conduct complex combat behaviors in scenarios such as the within visual range dogfight before progressing to beyond visual range engagements.

The ACE demonstrations will bridge the gap from simple physics-based automated systems currently in use to complex systems capable of effective autonomy within highly dynamic and uncertain environments at mission speeds.

The technology development on the ACE program addresses four primary challenges:

1. Increase air combat autonomy performance in local behaviors (individual aircraft and team tactical)
2. Build and calibrate trust in air combat local behaviors
3. Scale performance and trust to global behaviors (heterogeneous multi-aircraft)
4. Build infrastructure for full-scale air combat experimentation