Sunday, December 8, 2024
Sunday, December 8, 2024
The Air Force is focused on 13 technical research areas to get its munitions portfolio on par with advancements in air dominance, including advanced control actuation systems, autonomy and improved aircraft integration, according to a broad agency announcement the service posted today.
Among the service’s top priorities are modeling, simulation and analysis. The idea, according to the Air Force Research Laboratory, is to be able to foster collaborative, simulated scenarios to evaluate the weapons performance under a sustained threat or in various environments.
“Concepts include, but are not limited to, intercommunicative weapons, novel damage mechanisms, lethal and novel destruct mechanisms, multiple targeting and time critical delivery,” the BAA states. “Detailed modeling includes, but is not limited to, sensors, aerodynamics, autopilots, navigation and guidance schemes, propulsion, warheads, fuzes, datalinks, fire control, launcher, suspension, carriage and release, error filters, environment (wind, fog, and dust), lethality, vulnerability and threats.”
Other important research areas include modular aircraft integration technologies, more precise guidance algorithms against maneuvering targets, innovative Find, Fix, Target, Track and small datalink technologies for the detection of threats to aircraft and related information sharing in part via high velocity fuzing. Additionally, the Air Force is interested in optionally autonomous engagement management systems to maximize aircraft survivability in battle zones and determine the best countermeasure response.
Any machine learning capability developed for the weapons systems should “facilitate a swarm of networked collaborative and autonomous weapon systems,” the service wrote. “Technology must demonstrate the ability to reconcile prescribed targets within a dynamic battlespace.”
Affordability is also a crucial requirement for future munitions, with the service indicating it wants to investigate both conventional and conceptual munitions warhead technology as it relates to the destruction, damage, defeat or denial of function of targets of interest. The researchers should focus on varying amounts of blast or damage outcomes, selectable effects and micro-warheads.
“Novel concepts of target defeat are encouraged to augment or replace the more traditional kinetic energy methods,” according to the BAA. “Research and development of energetic materials that could increase overall warhead performance. Including new or advanced explosive formulations and characterization, additive manufacturing of energetic materials, and high energy-rate fabrication advancement.”
On the power side, the service is looking to reduce the amount of energy and weight required to fire air-to-air missiles, starting with innovative thermal management, guidance electronics, and power generation and storage techniques, plus the miniaturization of batteries and internal packaging components to include propellant formulations and grain structures.
Specifically, the service is seeking “technologies that are able to maintain the operating pressures of a rocket motor while reducing mass to increase the performance,” the BAA notes. “As well as non-eroding throat technology utilizing advanced material (metallic inserts, ceramics, etc.) able to perform in severe environments such as high stagnation temperatures and pressures, abrasive propellants (high aluminum content) and high stress/strain.”
This BAA is intended to direct service-wide munitions research, design, development and eventually prototyping through 2029. Businesses are invited to submit white papers throughout the period of this BAA, and related proposals may be requested by a contracting officer. The cumulative amount for awards issued under this BAA is not expected to exceed $750 million.