The Air Force Strategic Development Planning and Experimentation Office demonstrated the value experimentation and prototyping have in rapidly fielding capabilities to address warfighter needs as it participated with its partner, the Air Force Special Operations Command, at the Emerald Warrior exercise in March at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico.

According to Dr. Dean Evans, Rapid Dragon Program Manager, SDPE successfully demonstrated that Rapid Dragon, previously known as the Palletized Munitions Program, was able to overcome issues identified in previous tests related to the stability of airdropped palletized munitions - ultimately improving the likelihood of rapid fielding and significantly reducing the risk of costly failures during a planned live-fire demonstration later this year.

"Now, more than ever we must take a different approach to how we deliver capability to the warfighter," said Chris Ristich, Director of SDPE. "Lengthy formal acquisition programs won't deliver the Future Force we need, and Rapid Dragon demonstrated that through collaboration and well thought-out programs, we can rapidly field relevant capabilities to meet the demands of today and tomorrow."

Evans stated the program began as a concept in September 2019, and SDPE began work on it in December 2019 as a pathfinder program, pairing SDPE with operators, acquisition professionals, and requirement owners to explore the operational advantages of utilizing existing airlift platforms to airdrop long range munitions without aircraft modifications. The Emerald Warrior demonstration was the latest advancement for the program's accelerated timeline, which already met proof of concept, validation of future force impacts, demonstrated weapons communications and reduced prototyping risks.

"Being able to leverage operational exercises such as Emerald Warrior is essential to successful programs as they help us buy down risk and save time and money by ensuring we can quickly pivot to incorporate operator feedback into our programs before changes become more costly," Evans said.

He explained that previous iterations identified stability concerns which would have hindered the ability to reliably deploy palletized munitions in operational situations. According to Evans, Emerald Warrior events evaluated parachute and rigging configurations to verify that the stability issues could be corrected to employ Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM) en masse at operational altitudes, adding that actual stabilization rates observed during the tests outperformed modeling predictions - potentially improving the capability by reducing the range loss and increasing weapon de-confliction.

During the exercise, key partners from HQ AFSOC, and aircrews from AFSOC units, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control Advanced Program test engineers, and a rigging team from Safran Electronics and Defense, Parachute USA Corp. worked alongside SDPE in support of the demonstration.

"The Rapid Dragon program offers just one example of how SDPE is accelerating change to deliver operationally relevant capabilities for the Future Force," said Rudy Klosterman, SDPE's Experimentation and Prototyping Division Chief.

"These experimentation and prototyping efforts coupled with our development planning, and modeling, simulation and analysis capabilities deliver the credible evidence needed to assess operational utility, highlight risk reduction and mission trades, and inform tactical and strategic acquisitions."

Klosterman shared that SDPE has a number of experimentation and prototyping efforts supporting many Air Force and Space Force customers, which are directly linked to National Defense Strategy (NDS) and Secretary of the Air Force priorities for creating a more lethal force and modernizing the Air and Space Forces we need.

"We must take holistic approaches to delivering the Future Force ensuring that we are delivering the right capabilities to the right people at the right time," said Ristich, who also leads SDPE's Transformational Capabilities Office (TCO) which demonstrates the viability of leap-ahead science and technology. "As the Chief has said in the Accelerate Change or Lose strategy, 'Good enough today will fail tomorrow.' SDPE is working to ensure we don't fail tomorrow."

Related Links
US Air Force Research Laboratory
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