US Army Plans Small UAV Demonstration Written 15 January 2019

Aviation Week reports that the US Army plans to demonstrate a “small unmanned aircraft system (UAS) that can be launched from its manned helicopters and unmanned aircraft and controlled from the cockpit.” The Air Launched Effects (ALE) program “aims to develop a family of small UAS that would team with other manned and unmanned platforms to penetrate denied airspace and attack integrated air defense systems.” ALE will also support “interchangeable payloads” for a variety of mission profiles. The short-term demonstration’s goal is to “launch a minimum of four UAS from a Boeing AH-64 Apache helicopter hovering below 150 ft. above ground level (AGL) and a minimum of four from a General Atomics MQ-1C Gray Eagle flying at about 10,000 ft. AGL.” According to the request for information, ALE will “use artificial intelligence, operate semi-autonomously and will implement the commander’s intent through collaboration with other team members. They will not have continuous or near-continuous data links to the host platform.”
More Info (Aviation Week)