Air Force contract funding AI/ML research on autonomous fault management for hypersonic vehicles (In Orbit Aerospace) — a federal contract (USAspending)

Hypersonic flight means traveling at five times the speed of sound (Mach 5) or faster. At these speeds the aerodynamic, thermal, and vibration loads on a vehicle are severe and conditions can change in an instant, leaving little or no time for a human operator or a ground-based command to react. The "autonomous fault management" named in this contract refers to a set of controls that automatically detect anomalies in the vehicle or its systems, contain their effects, and where possible recover so flight can continue. Doing this with artificial intelligence and machine learning — techniques that learn patterns from large amounts of data and automate decisions — is the focus of the research.

Why it matters comes down to reaction time. In the hypersonic regime, the speed at which a problem must be handled can directly determine whether the vehicle survives and the mission holds together. The delay between a fault occurring and a human deciding how to respond may simply be too long. That is why a vehicle that can read its own situation and decide on a response in place is so valuable. AI/ML is attractive here because it may handle a wide range of fault patterns — including ones that are hard to anticipate in advance — by drawing on what it has learned, which fits the demands of such an extreme operating environment.

This award is also an example of how the Department of Defense and the Air Force fund technology development at private companies through federal procurement. USAspending is the U.S. system that makes such government spending public and traceable, letting anyone see which agency awarded what amount to which company and for what stated purpose. As such, it is a useful starting point for understanding where public money for advanced research and development is flowing, and to which firms. The specific results or deliverables of the research are not stated in the source.