Mission briefings for aircrews may never be the same. The Air Force now can spread across the service a new base-level command and control tool to automate aircrew mission briefings, following a two-year effort by the Global Cyberspace Integration Center at Langley AFB, Va., and the Air Force Academy’s Institute for Information Technology Applications. The duo has released the Warfighter’s Edge, or WEdge, to the field. Capt. Larry van der Oord reports that this fully network-capable system is heads above a digital program called Briefing Room Interactive used by some units, because WEdge takes minimal training and is easy to use compared to the technically challenging and non-deployable BRI. Pat McAtee, GCIC WEdge program manager, said, “WEdge automates data to deliver the most relevant information in a user-friendly manner,” and it’s “easily deployable for combat operations.”
The Air Force is leaning toward a less-sophisticated autonomous aircraft in the second increment of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the services chief futurist said. He also suggested that the next increment of CCA may be air-launched, a la the "Rapid Dragon" experiments conducted by the service in recent years.