U.S. Air Force expands X-62 VISTA’s role in testing AI for combat aviation

The US Air Force is upgrading X-62 VISTA to expand flight testing of combat autonomy, with additional radar capability, computing power and sensor capacity. Recent HAVE HOLIDAYS experiments evaluated a third-party autonomous agent, BirdBox target-recognition software, runtime assurance controls from 3Laws Robotics and IBM's NorthPole neuromorphic processor. The processor also ran parallel trajectory simulations aboard the aircraft using Lockheed Martin Skunk Works' Supermassive framework, assessing onboard computation under flight conditions. Funded by the Test Resource Management Center through the Air Force Test Center, the Mission Systems Upgrade will support a larger research roadmap and complement programs including VENOM.