Strengthening the F-35 Advantage with Distributed Teaming
July 13, 2022
With the rise of contested environments, there is a critical need for assets to persist within non-permissive airspace – This is where uncrewed systems are key. The operational concept of leveraging autonomous system in partnership with assets like the 5th Generation F-35 fighter is often referred to as Crewed-Uncrewed Teaming. We like to think about this operational concept as the Distributed Team
Diverse – Dispersed – Disruptive
Distributed teaming pairs a mix of survivable, highly capable autonomous vehicles coupled with low-cost, modular uncrewed systems operating in partnership with 5th Generation and Next Generation fighters. The F-35 is the preferred piloted partner for our vision of distributed teaming and plays an immense role in the positioning of the team.
Optimizing Decisions
Once in the highly contested airspace with its uncrewed teammates, the F-35 does the job of multiple platforms serving as a battlespace manager, sharing advanced targeting data, protecting with electronic warfare capabilities, and delivering force where required. Distributed teaming extends the reach of networked sensors, increasing manned platform survivability and providing distributed data collection, fusion and distribution to inform decision making and enable tactical execution.
The Big Picture
Partnering F-35 with a distributed team provides an unparalleled advantage in the battlespace, enhancing situational awareness while allowing the pilot to make better decisions faster. We are committed to affordably fielding critical crewed-uncrewed teaming capability, including direct support of components and enablers of F-35 interoperability with autonomous systems across domains.
From our perspective, crewed-uncrewed teaming isn’t so much revolutionary as it is more an evolution of the core capabilities and technologies we’ve been investing in for quite some time. We are simply taking the level of connectedness and interoperability between piloted aircraft like the F-35 and autonomous systems to the next level.
