Air Force Awards Xwing Autonomous Flight System Development Contract

Xwing and the U.S. Air Force have begun autonomous flight trials of the firm’s Superpilot flight control system aboard a Cessna 208 Caravan.

Jack Daleo

Thursday, May 11, 2023 at 06:22 PM ET

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Xwing and the U.S. Air Force have begun autonomous flight trials of the firm’s Superpilot flight control system aboard a Cessna 208 Caravan. [Courtesy: Xwing]

Key Takeaways:

Xwing has secured a significant Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract with the U.S. Air Force’s AFWERX Prime program for autonomous flight trials.
The partnership involves testing Xwing's "Superpilot" flight control system on a Cessna 208 Caravan, which allows the aircraft to navigate and perform evasive maneuvers autonomously, initially with onboard pilots for feedback, with the goal of eventually removing the crew entirely.
Superpilot is designed for dual usage, learning from thousands of commercial cargo flights to enable deployment for various military missions (cargo, intelligence, medevac) and commercial logistics.
The system is on a path to FAA certification, having become the first large unmanned aircraft system (UAS) with artificial intelligence to receive an official project designation for airworthiness safety standards.

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Bay Area-based Xwing, which already boasts contracts with NASA and the FAA, may have just nabbed its most important partnership yet.

The autonomous aviation firm on Thursday announced it had been awarded a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract with the U.S. Air Force’s AFWERX Prime program, an initiative launched in 2020 to speed the commercialization of emerging markets—and to give the Air Force a pipeline for groundbreaking technology.