The AAAx Vision to Accelerate Autonomy Test & Evaluation using the X-62A VISTA

The Autonomous Attritable Aircraft Experiment (AAAx) is an experimentation campaign that seeks to (1) Determine the competitive advantage of autonomous attributable aircraft to the U.S. Air Force, (2) Demonstrate the operational integration of autonomous attritable aircraft with crewed teammates, and (3) Determine the infrastructure required to test, support, and sustain autonomous attritable aircraft. From Spring 2021 to Spring 2022 AAAx executed 16 autonomous uncrewed vehicle flight tests on multiple group-4/5 drones. During testing, vehicle issues interfered with 5 of 16 flight tests. In addition, since these platforms are uncrewed, additional USAF safety and airworthiness processes resulted in flight test delays. In order to overcome vehicle-related delays and USAF process delays caused by testing exclusively with uncrewed vehicles, the AAAx team has invested in the USAF Test Pilot School’s X-62A VISTA to serve as a crewed, tactical surrogate vehicle for testing and evaluating control-based AI algorithms and fixed-wing vehicle models. This paper will present the AAAx team’s vision for leveraging the X-62A VISTA platform to accelerate the test and evaluation of AI/Autonomy capabilities.