AFRL Showcases Common Chassis Concept for Low-Cost Attritable Drones | Aviation

The Low Cost Attritable Aircraft Platform Sharing program exploits the biology’s “genus” and “species” concept, which will allow the use of a common base system to build large numbers of inexpensive, tailored-role uncrewed systems for affordable but credible mass.

The AFRL (Air Force Research Laboratory) has released a new concept video of its LCAAPS (Low Cost Attritable Aircraft Platform Sharing) program, showing an autonomous “mother” drone and its collaborative unmanned aircraft undertaking air-to-air missions. The AFRL calls these systems Autonomous Collaborative Platforms (ACL).

The video shows five drones, comprising a main commanding UCAV flanked by two collaborative autonomous drones on either side, tackling together an hostile air target. Obviously, the systems are modular and open system architecture-enabled for ‘scalability’ and ‘low cost’ that are the mantra in today’s weapons design doctrines.

However, the leading feature here is the “genus” and “species” concept borrowed from biology, where both the primary UCAV and its collaborative drones, although they are different airframes with different…