By
Theresa Hitchens on March 05, 2021 at 3:20 PM
AFRL image of autonomous swarming munitions
WASHINGTON: Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is shifting the focus of its Golden Horde program from testing its own swarming weapons to developing a digital environment, nicknamed Colosseum, to test vendors bringing their own concepts.
“What we are looking to do is beginning a phase of an open, collaborative autonomy architecture, and this government-owned reference architecture is really going to be an environment where more players can come and compete their own versions of what autonomous collaborative weapons should be,” AFRL Director Brig. Gen. Heather Pringle said last week during the Air Force Association’s annual winter meeting.
US Air Force’s ‘Golden Horde’ swarming munitions program to get second chance February 4 Four Collaborative Small Diameter Bombs, or CSDBs, hang from the wing of an F-16 Fighting Falcon from the Air Force Test Center’s 96th Test Wing at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., Nov. 14, 2020. Two of the bombs were dropped during the first flight demonstration of the Air Force Golden Horde Vanguard program. WASHINGTON Now that the U.S. Air Force’s first test of “Golden Horde” swarming bombs was deemed a partial success, the service is giving the technology a second shot later this month, the commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory said Thursday.