AIR FORCE PLANT 42 PALMDALE, Calif.—As the Pentagon tries to realize the Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) vision, Northrop Grumman
[NOC] said it has been hard at work on the company’s Distributed Autonomy/Responsive Control (DA/RC) architecture, which is to remove an aircraft’s dependence on continuous communication and to include a human selectable, “man on the loop” level of autonomy for aircraft.
DA/RC is to apply across the spectra of conflict from permissive to highly contested environments in which aircraft will be able to respond to dynamic conditions and share relevant data through low-probability of intercept, jam-resistant links. The company said it has already put DA/RC through its paces in linking scores of platforms, including the MQ-4C Triton, in simulations and live events and that DA/RC may manage a fleet of aircraft carrier-borne X-47Bs.
“This is a prototype of how we see JADC2 happening,” Richard Sullivan, Northrop Grumman’s vice president of program management, said of DA/RC. Sullivan likened DA/RC to a Waze for a heterogenous force package of aircraft with different fuel levels, life cycles, and performance attributes. In addition, Northrop Grumman said DA/RC has already led to command and control improvements for specific platforms. Sullivan told reporters at a press event here that a DA/RC application spurred the ongoing Dynamic Mission Operations (DYNAMO) upgrade for the RQ-4 Global Hawk. DYNAMO is to allow the in-flight re-routing of Global Hawk.