Runtime Assured Autonomy - SBIR Topic DAF26BZ01-NV008

Disclaimer:
This topic was temporarily posted by the Department of War SBIR Program on March 2nd 2026 and removed the following day.
We believe this topic is planned to be released once the SBIR program is reauthorized; however, this topic may ultimately be modified or withdrawn.

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Funding Amount:

Est. $140,000

Deadline to Apply:

Est. April 29th, 2026.

Objective:

The Need for Advanced Autonomy: The Air Force has gained wide interest in fully autonomous, unmanned air platforms operating in teams making collaborative decisions to successfully complete missions. Highest level, real-time decision making will be the responsibility of advanced autonomy. This autonomy will include both flight-level autonomy and mission-level autonomy. Flight-level autonomy functions will generate local commands that keep the vehicle operating safely. Mission-level autonomy functions will continuously deliver courses of action (COAs) to each platform in the fleet, commanding mission progress in real time. Although all vehicles in the fleet will have instantiations of the mission-level autonomy functions, COAs will typically be generated by a chosen fleet leader.

Description:

The Need for Runtime Assured Autonomy: Autonomy approaches under current development can be highly complex and nondeterministic in their behaviors. AFRL is currently developing approaches for autonomously executed missions using complex event processing techniques. This class of autonomy will be difficult, if not impossible, to fully certify from an airworthiness perspective, and therefore cannot be trusted to correctly operate under all mission conditions. Further, the capabilities of artificial intelligence and autonomy are rapidly increasing with continually updated versions and design iterations expected to occur throughout the operational lifecycles of unmanned systems. Such protocols are clearly not amenable to the time consuming and expensive airworthiness certification process.

To address this hurdle, Runtime assured autonomy (RTAA) functions will be needed to perform runtime monitoring of the autonomy and enact procedures to mitigate any adverse effects due to errors in the autonomy design. The safety and performance protections provided by RTAA will lessen the certification burden, allowing rapid fielding of autonomy functions.

Topic Objective: The objective of this topic is to develop innovative approaches to RTAA systems that protect the individual platform and the fleet against undiscovered design errors in the autonomy functions. The focus should be on use cases in which the RTAA determines whether the autonomy is generating infeasible, incorrect, and/or non-optimal solutions (e.g., commanded paths or task allocation) that may affect mission progress and effectiveness.

Several of the Air Force’s Operational Imperatives call for unmanned platforms to support manned platforms. The Advanced Battle Management System, Moving Target Engagement, Tactical Air Dominance and Global Strike imperatives all call for less expensive, attritable uncrewed platforms to aid in executing complex battle missions. These uncrewed systems cannot always be guaranteed to be controlled by remote human operators due to loss of radio communications or saturated operator workload. Full autonomy will need to fill the gap when human command/control cannot. To address future Air Force tactical and strategic needs, an increasing number of advanced systems with intelligent autonomy are being envisioned. Intelligent autonomy is central to systems involving a wide range of advanced adaptation, reconfiguration, autonomous decision making and contingency management.

Assured autonomy is the requirement that the autonomy operates safely and correctly under all circumstances and mission scenarios. RTAA fulfills this Air Force technology need, providing continuous monitoring/mitigation of autonomy functions to deliver required assurances of safe flight and correct mission execution. There are considerable challenges to developing a working RTAA system. The two key functions of the RTAA are:

1. Fault detection & isolation: The RTAA system must be able to determine if the autonomy is correctly producing COAs and other commands, which is especially difficult if agnostic of the autonomy function details. Developing strategies that can indirectly detect and isolate autonomy design faults in dynamic environments will be key to developing the RTAA system. Faults within the autonomy will need to be determined through the effects those faults have on the platform’s safety, performance, and/or mission effectiveness. RTAA fault determination may come from comparing the current actions of the autonomy with nominal functional or performance requirements (e.g., what defines correct behavior), sanity checks, rubrics, rule sets, etc.

2. Mitigation response: If the RTAA determines that errors in the design of the autonomy functions are adversely affecting flight and mission decisions, it must then activate proper recovery or reversionary protocols. This may include first commanding the vehicle to a failsafe loiter point, then clearing functional states and restarting the autonomy functions. As a last resort, the RTAA may activate return-to base or ditch procedures. If available, the RTAA may switch to simpler, reversionary autonomy functions that can continue the mission either temporarily until the advanced autonomy is back online, or to mission completion, if capable.

The two main functional levels of an RTAA system are:

1. Platform/fleet safety: Here, the RTAA typically treats the autonomy functions as a black box and simply monitors the platform and fleet for safety violations. The RTAA will monitor, for example, 1) flight envelope parameters such as angle of attack, angular rates, g-loading, etc., determining if their values remain within prescribed limits, 2) flight corridor values, determining if the vehicles are within their prescribed airspace and location for path deconfliction, and 3) path commands generated by the autonomy functions to determine if the vehicle’s maneuvering capabilities can fly the commanded path. If it is determined that safety violations are ensuing, (and assuming no hardware faults or other contingencies are causing unsafe conditions), then the RTAA will deactivate the autonomy functions and activate simpler reversionary controllers or procedures designed to bring the vehicle/fleet back to a safe state.

2. Autonomy function performance: Here, the RTAA is monitoring for correct and/or optimal performance of the autonomy itself. The RTAA must determine if the autonomy functions are, for example, 1) generating correct COAs, including safe, optimal and deconflicted paths, 2) commanding proper asset allocation and reassignment of platform roles, if necessary (e.g., send the vehicle with the most fuel to the furthest mission point, or use the fastest vehicle for the most time-critical objective, etc.), 3) replanning mission objectives accordingly due to unforeseen changes in the environment (inclement weather, observed adversarial threats, etc.), changes in the commander’s intent (uploaded changes to mission objectives, etc.) or other unforeseen contingencies, and 4) addressing other relevant mission aspects to maximize mission effectiveness.

Who will win?

If you can achieve the objective above better than any other company on the market, you have a very high-likelihood of success and should apply.

Who is eligible to apply?

Any company that meets the following criteria:

• For-profit company

• U.S.-owned and controlled.

• 500 or fewer employees (including affiliates)

How Can BW&CO Help?

1) End-to-end support including, strategy, writing of the full proposal, and administrative & compliance support.

2) Proposal strategy and review.

3) Administrative & compliance support.

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