The U.S. Department of Defence has initiated a new project to transform two General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. (GA-ASI) MQ-20 Avengers into advanced air-to-air adversary surrogates for fighter pilot training. This development is part of Project Red 5, a $98 million prototyping initiative spearheaded by the Test Resource Management Center (TRMC), a division under the Office of the Secretary of Defence.
The contract mandates GA-ASI to equip the MQ-20 Avengers with state-of-the-art sensors, data links, and mission systems. These enhancements will allow the unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) to simulate enemy aircraft, providing realistic adversarial threats during training missions.
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Jeff Hettick, GA-ASI’s vice president for Agile Mission Systems, expressed enthusiasm for the project, stating, “We are thrilled to partner with TRMC to bring these capabilities that create operationally relevant Red Air surrogates and significantly improve Blue Force mission success in realistic air-to-air training scenarios.”
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Project Red 5 reintroduces a concept previously explored by the Air Force until 2023 through the Adversary Air-Unmanned Experiment program. This earlier effort awarded a contract to Blue Force Technologies to develop the Fury UAS as an adversarial surrogate. However, the program was eventually shelved, and resources were reallocated to the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) initiative.
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Anduril Industries later acquired Blue Force Technologies, positioning the Fury as a contender for one of the two Increment 1 CCA development contracts. GA-ASI’s XQ-67 UAS also secured a CCA contract. Now, the MQ-20 Avengers are set to take on the adversary air role, effectively stepping into the void left by the Air Force’s Fury program.
IMAGE CAPTION: FT47 -AVENGER GERAL ATOMICS
