BAE Systems awarded multiple contracts to develop key tech for Army’s A-Team program

November 4, 2020 | AUVSI News

The U.S. Army has awarded BAE Systems multiple contracts to develop key technologies for its Advanced Teaming Demonstration Program (A-Team).

BAE Systems was the only company awarded contracts for three of the program’s four focus areas, which are designed to advance manned and unmanned teaming (MUM-T) capabilities that are expected to be important components in the U.S. Army’s Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program.

The U.S. Army developed the A-Team program to create an automated system to offload the cognitive burden of pilots while allowing them to command swarms of UAS, all in an effort to combat the increasingly complex, contested, and communication-denied battlespace presented by near-peer adversaries.

“Our mature autonomy technology, which is the basis of our offering for the A-Team program, will greatly increase the warfighter’s ability to have a complete view of the battlespace and streamline decision making,” says Chris Eisenbies, product line director of the Autonomy, Control, and Estimation group at BAE Systems’ FAST Labs™.

“Future conflicts will include manned and unmanned teaming and increased automation in highly contested environments, helping to enable mission success.”

BAE Systems says that it was selected to deliver a highly automated system to provide situational awareness, information processing, resource management, and decision making that is beyond human capabilities. According to the company, these advantages become more and more important as the Army moves toward mission teams of UAS that will be controlled by pilots in real time.

Totaling $9 million, the contracts include awards for the Human Machine Interface, Platform Resource Capability Management, and Situational Awareness Management elements of the program. BAE Systems’ FAST Labs research and development team and Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) Systems business area will leverage their decades of work developing autonomy technologies to deliver this crucial technology.

To conduct simulation tests and demonstrations with products from different contractors in consideration of transition to the FVL program, the program will utilize the Future Open Rotorcraft Cockpit Environment Lab. Work for the program takes place at BAE Systems’ facilities in Burlington, Massachusetts and San Diego, California.