“U.S. Navy and Lockheed Martin Skunk Works® Showcase Groundbreaking Live Control of a Drone with UMCS and MDCX™”

Driven by the Skunk Works^® MDCX™ autonomy framework, the UMCS managed a GA MQ-20 Avenger uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) as it accomplished a live flight mission. This exhibition serves as a trailblazer that propels the intricate technology essential for fostering collaboration between manned and unmanned systems, as envisioned for initiatives like CCA and more.

The flight evaluation marks a pivotal achievement in the evolution of UMCS, laying the groundwork for the Navy’s impending unmanned aviation endeavors.

MDCX™ empowered the U.S. Navy Air Vehicle Pilots located at Patuxent River, Maryland, to oversee the MQ-20 during its flight in California.

“Skunk Works takes pride in partnering with the Navy to bring its Carrier Air Wing of the Future concept to fruition,” stated John Clark, vice president and general manager, Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. “The MDCX facilitated the swift integration of the MQ-20 ‘autonomy core’ with the UMCS, showcasing common control capacity and third-party platform interoperability.”

“Autonomous collaborative platforms that are mission-ready with technologies that have been validated at high readiness levels, along with the maturation of those technologies, is merely one focus area for GA-ASI,” shared GA-ASI President David R. Alexander. “This partnership with the USN and Lockheed Martin propels the UMCS’s beyond line-of-sight functionalities, while underscoring the robustness of our Tactical Autonomy Core Ecosystem (TacACE).”

“This was a monumental leap for unmanned naval aviation,” remarked Lt. Steven Wilster, MQ-25 AVP. “This demonstration highlighted UMCS’s inaugural live control of an uncrewed aerial system, and it was exhilarating to be part of such a significant moment in history. The team is forging the path for integrating essential unmanned capabilities across the joint force to counter the advanced threats faced by our warfighters today and in the future.”

The U.S. Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps are collaborating through a Tri-Service Memorandum of Understanding on critical subsystems for CCA platforms. Leading the U.S. Department of Defense, the Navy is developing a unified control framework and ground control station (GCS) for these systems. This initiative is being conducted in partnership with Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, capitalizing on decades of operational expertise in delivering GCSs supported by the U.S. government’s Open Mission Systems architecture for optimal third-party platform integration and interoperability.

The Navy will refine UMCS’s specifications based on insights gathered from this demonstration and carry out additional flight assessments to advance command and control technologies, autonomy, and manned-unmanned collaboration.