Last week, drones and helicopters filled the skies in AllianceTexas above the Texas Motor Speedway as part of a large-scale exercise simulating a wildland fire. Unlike traditional operations, every aircraft was directed by advanced, fully autonomous technologies.
One team of robotic aircraft located the fire, while another identified water sources for refilling. Working together, the drone teams coordinated which fire targets to attack first, how to avoid one another, and how to deconflict with any rogue aircraft in the area—all while repeating the firefighting cycle.
In January 2024, the North Texas Cohort, led by the University of North Texas (UNT), received a two-year contract from the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) to continue Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) research across Dallas-Fort Worth-Denton. The program, titled NTCMT 1-2022, Advanced Air Mobility/Urban Air Mobility System Within the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex (NTXAAMPP), focused on designing, testing, and demonstrating advanced air corridor systems in the DFW and Perot Field Alliance Airport region. The work builds on three years of prior NASA and U.S. Air Force AAM research and development.
Operation FIRE SWARM 2, the latest in a series of increasingly complex trials, showcased the BlueSkies™ Operational Air Mobility system—a hardware/software solution enabling manned and unmanned aircraft to coordinate and safely execute complex maneuvers in metropolitan airspace or wildfire conditions.
For this exercise, a simulated fire was detected near Hillwood’s AllianceTexas Flight Test Center, west of Texas Motor Speedway. An Incident Command Center (ICC) was established to manage the operation. Autonomous search drones were deployed to scan the designated “Fire Traffic Area,” while air corridors and routing were created for a swarm of “water bomber” aircraft. These bombers, professionally piloted Bell 505 helicopters from the Helicopter Institute fitted with BlueSkies™, received assignments via CivTAK tablets.
The water bombers autonomously flew to their designated refill sites, safely deconflicted from one another by the system, then coordinated with search drones to update fire locations and simulate retardant drops at critical points. Once complete, they returned for retasking as new aircraft cycled in.
The mission was a success, marking two firsts in aviation.
- The first live demonstration of small drones operating under FAA-compliant Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) software, seamlessly interacting with larger aircraft running NASA-designed Provider of Services for UTM (PSU) software.
- The first fully autonomous, multi-aircraft, multi-operator live flight operation demonstrating vehicle-to-vehicle communications in the air.
The FIRE SWARM team will close out the NTXAAMPP project in the coming months but will continue advancing AAM development with partners including NASA’s Advanced Mobility Pathfinder (AMP) project, Texas A&M’s CROW program, and the FAA’s UTM Operational Evaluation Key Site initiative—all based in Texas.
The North Texas Cohort includes Hillwood and Alliance Aviation Services, which owns and operates the AllianceTexas Flight Test Center; the Helicopter Institute as the air platform, crew, and training partner; Avianco as one of the PSU providers; Metron as the demand-capability balancing software developer; Hermes as the primary data-hub; AAMTEX as the UTM and weather service provider; University of North Texas (UNT) as the program lead; and Unmanned Experts Inc. as the program manager and BlueSkies™ development and marketing team.
For more information, please contact Keven Gambold at [email protected].
