U.S. Navy equips Australia with new digital test range to advance autonomous collaborative platforms
NAVAL AIR WARFARE CENTER AIRCRAFT DIVISION, Patuxent River, Md. – The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) is accelerating the deployment of autonomous collaborative platforms for U.S. and allied forces following the delivery of a new digital test range to the Australian Department of Defence, designed to test unmanned systems in virtual flight.
“In the future of aerial combat, unmanned systems will fly wing-to-wing with crewed fighters, and our aviators must be able to trust those systems implicitly,” said NAWCAD Commander Rear Adm. Todd Evans. “A digital test range provides the secure environment to test and trust these technologies before flight, ultimately improving readiness and protecting warfighters.”
Mastering aerial tactics in simulation ensures unmanned systems can perform effectively on day one, ultimately helping manned fighters get closer to targets and bring more weapons to the fight safely.
NAWCAD, which has successfully scaled digital test and training ranges across the Department of War, recently delivered the first version of the new range, a framework known as the Joint Digital Autonomy Range (JDAR).
Historically, evaluating new aircraft required expensive, complex, and time-consuming physical flights. The JDAR framework replaces much of that overhead with an advanced simulated environment where engineers can safely analyze how autonomous software and flight maneuvers react to diverse, high-threat scenarios.
This virtual environment is critical for building trust between human pilots and unmanned wingmen before they fly real-world missions. While physical flight tests remain an important milestone, the digital range allows teams to run millions of simulated flights quickly at a fraction of the cost. This rapid feedback loop accelerates program schedules, improves safety, and allows allied forces to continuously update tactics. As the JDAR framework is built with flexible, "plug-and-play" open architecture, engineers can easily swap in and test new software as global threats evolve without having to rebuild the entire system.
While the JDAR framework is the digital range’s foundation software, NAWCAD plans to significantly upgrade Australia's capabilities with an autonomy-enabled unclassified Joint Simulation Environment (JSE).
Developed by NAWCAD, the JSE scales up digital testing by moving from individual aircraft to the entire mission. The JSE upgrade will simulate a massive battlespace environment where multiple platforms interact at once providing a much more realistic representation of real-world missions.
The upcoming delivery makes Australia the first international partner to receive the JDAR framework capability. NAWCAD plans to expand digital test capabilities to other allies to ensure joint air forces can fly and fight together seamlessly.
NAWCAD employs military, civilian, and contract personnel to operate test ranges, laboratories, and aircraft in support of test, evaluation, research, development, and sustainment for all Navy and Marine Corps aviation platforms. Based in Patuxent River, Maryland, NAWCAD also has major sites in St. Inigoes, Maryland; Lakehurst, New Jersey; and Orlando, Florida.
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