RTX’s BBN Technologies, with funding from the Air Force Research Laboratory, has demonstrated a self-healing system that provides continuous, secure data flow for combat air support even when underlying networks are jammed, fragmented or unavailable, the company announced May 20.
The system is designed to operate across a diverse range of military and commercial communication pathways, from satellite links to low-power tactical radios. Using the Primary, Alternate, Contingency and Emergency for Agile Combat Employment (PACE4ACE) architecture, the system automatically selects the best available link and reroutes traffic without operator input.
“For warfighters on the ground and in the cockpit, PACE4ACE helps ensure critical data never disappears, even under jamming,” said Dr. Sam Nelson, principal investigator at RTX BBN Technologies. “The network self-heals, so crews can focus on the mission instead of troubleshooting communications.”
During the exercise, four geographically dispersed sites remained connected. When any of the high-capacity links were jammed, the system instantly switched to the next viable waveform, maintaining situational awareness and keeping Open Mission Systems and Team Awareness Kit applications synchronized.
The demonstration validates the Agile Combat Employment, or ACE, concept for the U.S. Air Force, showing that dispersed, contested air support units can maintain secure communications across any combination of satellite, radio or low‑power links.
Work on PACE4ACE is being conducted in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Long-range radios used in the test were supplied by the Institute for Human & Machine Cognition in Pensacola, Florida, while high-frequency support was provided by Collins Aerospace, an RTX business, in Ottawa, Canada.
Source: RTX
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