The RAF Rapid Capabilities Office is assessing whether its autonomy projects are compatible with the US Air Force’s Autonomy Government Reference Architecture, with Britain’s PYRAMID open avionics standard already shown to work with the American framework.
The work was confirmed in a written parliamentary answer to Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty, who asked what steps had been taken to ensure the RAF Rapid Capabilities Office was aligned with the USAF Autonomy Government Reference Architecture, known as A-GRA.
Defence Minister Louise Sandher-Jones said: “Work is being conducted to assess the compatibility of relevant projects/activities in the RAF Rapid Capabilities Office with the USAF Autonomy Government Reference Architecture (A-GRA).”
She added: “For example, the UK’s PYRAMID Technical Standard open avionics system reference architecture developed by the Ministry of Defence has been shown to be compatible with the A-GRA.”
A-GRA is a US government-owned modular architecture intended to provide common interfaces between autonomous mission software and the aircraft or other platforms carrying it. The approach is designed to make autonomy software less dependent on a particular airframe and allow different compliant systems to be integrated more readily.
That has become increasingly important as the United States develops Collaborative Combat Aircraft and other uncrewed systems expected to operate alongside crewed combat aircraft. Rather than treating the autonomy package, mission software and aircraft as a single tightly integrated product, the architecture is intended to establish common technical boundaries between them. In principle, that makes it easier to update software, introduce new suppliers and move autonomy capabilities between compatible platforms.
The British PYRAMID standard follows a similar open-architecture philosophy. Developed for military avionics, it is intended to provide common interfaces that allow aircraft mission systems and individual applications to be introduced or replaced without redesigning an entire avionics architecture around them.
The work comes as both countries put greater emphasis on autonomous aircraft, collaborative systems and software-defined combat air capabilities, where the ability to integrate different sensors, mission applications and autonomy packages quickly is increasingly important.
Compatibility between the two architectures could also make future UK-US experimentation easier by reducing the amount of bespoke integration required when British and American systems are brought together.
