After receiving approval to perform critical cargo missions for the Air Force, autonomous aircraft operator Xwing said their "phones started ringing" from other "partners in the military" interested in working with the company, including Pacific Air Forces.
“We have a lot of suitors in PACAF that really want to work with us in a various number of exercises, but we haven't solidified any of those agreements at this point,” Xwing’s Business Development Lead and retired Air Force Col. Matthew Getty said. “We can fly without that pilot now and I think that’s what separates us from many of the folks in this space.”
He added that Xwing “absolutely” wants to be included in the Air Force’s first large-scale multicombatant command exercise scheduled to take place in the Indo-Pacific in 2025.
“But between now and 2025, really what we’re looking at are those smaller scale exercises, whether they be up in Alaska, out in the Mariana [Islands], in Hawaii. So those are the places where I think we can really prove and show off this capability as we build to something like that exercise in ‘25,” Getty said.
Earlier this month, the Air Force awarded Xwing military approval to transport time-sensitive cargo after its unmanned system successfully completed the AGILE FLAG 24-1 Joint Force exercise.
Xwing has worked with the Air Force Research Laboratory’s innovation arm, known as AFWERX, since the end of 2022. It is part of a program called Autonomy Prime aimed at partnering with small businesses to develop and implement emerging artificial intelligence technologies.
The new designation means that Xwing’s autonomous aircraft can now be used for public aircraft operations, granting them access to U.S. military fields around the globe and the ability to fast track missions without needing input from the Federal Aviation Administration for each flight.
“As soon as they saw the technology, they’re like, ‘Oh, now I can do these things. Now I can change how I’m operating,’” said Maxime Gariel, Xwing’s chief technology officer and founder, referring to the burgeoning interest in their product. “It’s something they had not thought about because they didn’t know it existed. And by seeing it and touching it and being able to put cargo on it, it has changed right away for the people on the field doing the logistics.”
Asked whether the company is explicitly interested in consideration for the Air Mobility Command’s Next Generation Air-refueling and Airlift Systems, Getty told Inside Defense that “if we’re talking about PACA, we’re talking about Air Mobility Command.”
But “we’re not really in the business of telling the Air Force what platform this works on,” he said, adding that their developing technology may be tacked on to numerous traditional or future platforms as the service sees fit.
Xwing typically takes an existing airframe, like the Cessna Caravan, out-sources the hardware and integrates their own complex software. This allows the platforms to “have all the sensors, all the decision-making capabilities, all the compute power; so that when you launch it from the ground it can navigate the airspace on its own, it can land safely,” Gariel said.
The system uses a remote operator as a “human monitoring the loop” to help augment crews and modify the destination or route as needed in real time, Getty said. But the automation is self-sufficient and can often think faster or respond better than the human, even in places where communication is shut off, he added.
Among the platform’s key abilities is acting as a force multiplier, reducing risk to airmen entering combat zones, removing the strain of long hours and mid-air maintenance from humans, boosting agility and surveying an airfield for threats or other obstacles, Getty added.
Autonomy is on track to play a major role in the Air Force’s readiness for future conflict with foreign adversaries, notably China. Already the service is prioritizing Collaborative Combat Aircraft to accompany its Next Generation Air Dominance fighter jet, while AMC commander Gen. Michael Minihan is eyeing some autonomous features for the tanker intended to fill the gap between the last KC-46A deliveries and NGAS.
For Xwing, “we’re showing them what we can actually do today, not what we can do 20 years from now,” Getty said.
PACAF did not immediately respond to an inquiry for comment from Inside Defense.