The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, working with the Air Force Research Laboratory, recently successfully tested an autonomic detect and avoid system on an unmanned vehicle. The Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System program includes a small, plug-and-play system designed for both manned and unmanned aircraft to automatically sense and avoid other aircraft nearby. The system uses just a single optical camera and “passive ranging features that assess the likelihood of an incoming aircraft intersecting the flight path of its host aircraft,” DARPA said in a Tuesday release. DARPA recently outfitted the system on a small UAV that was able to detect and avoid a Cessna 172G that approached from multiple angles and distances.
B-21 Temporary Shelters Could Also Shelter B-2s
March 5, 2021
The Air Force's experimental runway shelter for the new B-21 bomber is large enough to cover it or the B-2, and therefore reveals no information about the dimensions of the new aircraft. Two such shelters will be evaluated, but the maker of the second version hasn't been chosen, yet.