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Lockheed Martin and IBM’s Red Hat Team to Develop Smart Drone Swarms

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— 2 min read
Lockheed Martin and IBM’s Red Hat Team to Develop Smart Drone Swarms
LM RedHat

When seconds matter, real-time software updates can make or break a mission. That's why Lockheed Martin teamed up with Red Hat to accelerate the rapid deployment of swarm autonomy technologies, enabling software updates to make unmanned aerial systems smarter at scale in tactical environments.

Enhancing Tactics with Swarm Technology

Lockheed Martin, using technologies from Red Hat, is creating swarms that can detect and respond to emerging threats in real-time with an open architecture approach that allows the best of commercial, defense, and non-traditional suppliers to build game-changing solutions into the system as new technologies become available.

Lockheed Martin is combining Red Hat Device Edge’s (RHDE) containerization capability and lightweight modular architecture with Lockheed Martin autonomous swarm operations on the Skunk Works’s Indago 4 Uncrewed Aerial System, a tactical quadcopter that provides 360-degree reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities. By adding new AI and machine learning to this trusted platform, customers can now deploy smarter swarms capable of multi-step tasking and mission re-tasking in complex environments.

This work helps enable Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles to receive updated software modules on-the-fly, transforming the way we manage and update edge devices like UAVs.

Katie Gilmore, Lockheed Martin Program Manager

L - R: Red Hat Manager Felix Rivera and Lockheed Martin Program Manager Katie Gilmore presenting at the Red Hat Summit.

Integrating for a Stronger Defense

This approach allows the UAS swarms to travel farther and faster, strengthening deterrence and ensuring the security and best capabilities for the warfighter. By leveraging open architecture, Lockheed Martin can integrate capabilities from a wide range of collaborators, including Red Hat, to deliver a robust and adaptable defense system.

Lockheed Martin's advancements in UAS technologies, combined with the ability to deliver autonomy at scale, demonstrates the successful integration of multiple systems to provide our customer with solutions that are ahead of their need.

Source: Lockheed Martin

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