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US software aimed at making the battlefield a safer place from friendly fire has been demonstrated at the US Army’s Mission Command Battle Lab.
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The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Air Space Total Awareness for Rapid Tactical Execution (ASTARTE) program was able to use flight path planning in a simulated contested airspace battle to avoid friendly missiles, artillery fire, manned and unmanned aircraft while also dodging enemy fire.
The ASTARTE Program was originally developed in 2021 between DARPA, the Army, and the US Air Force before being integrated with the US Army’s Integrated Mission Planning and Airspace Control Tools (IMPACT) software suite in 2022.
DARPA Strategic Technology Office ASTARTE program manager Paul Zablocky said the program’s goal is to provide an accurate, real-time common operational picture of the airspace over an Army division, enabling long-range fire missions, as well as manned and unmanned aircraft operations, to occur safely in the same airspace.
“The demonstration showed that complex route alternatives could be created in seconds, leveraging available permissive airspace to avoid airspace where conflicts would potentially occur,” he said.
“There are many reasons this integration helps the warfighter. Coordinating and consolidating services at the user level greatly reduces procedural burden, which speeds the enterprise. ASTARTE also increases accuracy by automating tasks and reducing inherent human error.
“Most importantly, the ASTARTE and IMPACT integration forms a foundation of artificial intelligence-enabled services that will interact with other service component AI tools such as the Air Force’s Kessel Run All Domain Operations Suite (KRADOS) for planning and the All Domain Common Platform (ADCP) for operations.”
The program is finishing phase two integration efforts and is scheduled to begin phase three live testing this summer.
