Combat Controller (SOF) AI Sensor Fusion for Contested Airspace C2

Thrust AI's existing airspace situational awareness suite ("Bird Brain") integrates four real-time sensor modalities with modern AI/ML processing algorithms to deliver unprecedented situational awareness to terminal air traffic controllers, far beyond the capability of conventional RADAR, ADS-B, or visual control CONOPS. Bird Brain aggregates (1) visual-band optical, (2) infrared electro-optical, (3) automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B), and (4) VHF/UHF radio speech sensor inputs before passing fused streams through three AI/ML layers: two adaptively-filtered computer vision layers and one natural language processing layer. The proposed effort will perform technical improvements to the existing commercial system, in order to lightweight, miniaturize, and certify a modular system for both airdrop and jumpworthiness by SOF combat controllers operating in austere forward-deployed environments. This capability expands the existing uncontested airfield solution to the forward-operating contested environment in which warfighters operating at ground-controlled austere airfields are required to jump into landing zones with all available operating infrastructure. The functional architecture of Bird Brain will retain its current commercial solution capabilities in that it will bestow low-light extra-visual aircraft detection beyond the capability of the human eye, automatic recognition of position-correlated pattern communications, and automated traffic resolution alerting. Significant mass, volume, and structural improvements will be made, investigating lightweight carbon fiber casings and novel alloys in lieu of heaver steel components. In addition to persistent airspace surveillance capabilities within a ruck sack-sized form factor, the resulting system will affordáforward-deployed operators a slew-point-lock capability to aircraft of interest within the vicinity of an austere contested airfield.