Project VENOM - Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Operation

[basher54321]

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force’s next big step toward establishing a network of drone wingmen could come in a small fleet of experimental self-flying F-16 fighters.

The service’s proposed fiscal 2024 budget includes nearly $50 million to start a program called Project Venom — or Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Operations Model — to help it experiment with and refine autonomous software loaded onto six F-16s.

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Under Project Venom, Coleman told the magazine, the Air Force plans to add autonomous code to six F-16s. Human pilots would take off with the jets but allow the software to take over midair to determine whether it works and provides the expected benefits, Coleman said.

Coleman explained that this approach will let the Air Force add new software to speed up the experimentation process beyond what it usually takes to certify software for flight.

“Self driving cars didn’t go from fully manual to fully automated,” Coleman said. “The Tesla [vehicles] and the other electric vehicles, they’ve traveled millions or billions of miles where they learned and figured out how to interface with a human operator and to do so safely and securely. We don’t get to skip that part in the Air Force.”


https://www.defensenews.com/air/2023/03 ... gmen-tech/

[h-bomb]

I wonder if the work on the QF-16 will be leveraged in the program? If is kind of a head start as they have integrated the flight systems for unmanned flight.

[ChippyHo]

Is the aim of this project to turn the Viper into a high performance, attritable wing man ? If, as was shown in previous tests , the AI works faster than the human pilot does this make the Viper the "attack dog" in any engagement with enemy aircraft(s)?