General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) has introduced another new category of unmanned aircraft systems, focused on information dominance and airspace supremacy. Leveraging three decades of experience across millions of successful combat flight hours, the new Evolution line of advanced UAS joins GA-ASI's existing Predator-class and Mojave-class aircraft in delivering next-generation UAS that laim to provide advanced, affordable, attritable and autonomous combat power.

The name Evolution refers, the company says, to the evolutionary path GA-ASI has followed as it chartered the realm of unmanned aircraft. In the past three decades, GA-ASI has launched more than 25 UAS variants, beginning with the Gnat in 1992.

Evolution includes the development of GA-ASI's next-generation UAS solutions designed to meet the needs of the U.S. Air Force's vision for its future force, as well as new UAS concepts such as Defender, Sparrowhawk and the recently announced Gambit.

Gambit is an Autonomous Collaborative Platform (ACP) designed through digital engineering to speed its time to market and lower acquisition cost, and it will deliver an extended and enhanced sensing capability. The jet-powered platform is being built for air dominance and will heavily leverage advances in artificial intelligence and autonomous systems. Working alongside human-piloted aircraft, Gambit will enable pilots to see deeper into hostile airspace, detect threats first, and provide time and space for critical decisions and actions.

"GA-ASI has led the way in integrating UAS into every aspect of military operations," says GA-ASI President David R. Alexander. "Now we're once again pushing the boundaries of what's possible with unmanned aircraft, software, mission systems integration and more. Gambit will usher in a new era, where UAS work collaboratively with manned aircraft to detect, identify and target adversaries at range and scale across the battlespace."

Designed as an advanced concept aircraft, Gambit will use AI and autonomy to complete a variety of tasks without being prompted by an operator. GA-ASI's software and integration systems will support detection and analysis, and provide users with the highest quality intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance ever possible from an unmanned aircraft. On point out ahead of U.S. Air Force tactical aircraft, Gambit will also be able to sense and track targets of interest, and distribute that information across the battlespace.

"We're designing systems to meet future requirements, to include working collaboratively and autonomously," Alexander continues. "Gambit is part of a broader family of systems strategy that began with Predator and Reaper, and continues in support of USAF's future force design concepts."