The DARPA CODE White Force Network
(Room S320B)
29 Nov 17
9:30 AM
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10:00 AM
The DARPA Collaborative Operations in Denied Environments (CODE) program is developing highly advanced collaborative autonomy capabilities that will allow unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) to successfully engage mobile targets in denied or contested electromagnetic environments. The core goal is for CODE enabled Air Vehicles (AVs) to autonomously sense and evaluate the state of its operational environment, form teams, and carry out defined mission objectives with limited human supervision.
The testing of CODE capabilities on live ranges requires an interacting set of live, virtual, and constructive (LVC) assets to provide the necessary stimulus to the system under test (SUT). The CODE White Force Network (WFN) is designed to dynamically interject operationally-relevant effects, such as denial of communications or GPS, into the CODE software during flight as a means of stimulating and then verifying the performance of CODE autonomy algorithms. The WFN also allows large numbers of high fidelity virtual assets running the actual CODE software to be part of the test scenarios. In addition, the WFN ground station provides synthetic forces generation services and various control, visualization, and logging functions that interact in real-time with the on-board WFN flight software to create the desired effects.
This paper provides an overview of the WFN design and describes how the WFN was integrated into recent CODE test campaigns at NAWC-WD in China Lake, CA. The paper also discusses the increase in complexity planned for the next CODE phase test environment and how the WFN will address the associated technical challenges.