The Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center has stood up a new experimentation directorate to help the service rapidly field emerging technologies like directed energy and artificial intelligence by getting involved in early research that otherwise wouldn’t have been on its radar. In one case, the group participated in an experiment where scientists from the Air Force Research Laboratory brought directed-energy prototypes to U.S. Africa Command. Operational users tested the weapons' ability to thwart small unmanned aerial systems in...