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4 days ago
- Business
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Hybrid-Electric GHOST Strike-Recon Drone In The Works For USAF
The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has awarded General Atomics a contract for work on what is described as a 'hybrid-electric propulsion ducted fan next-generation intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance/strike unmanned aerial system,' or GHOST. A propulsion system of this kind can offer a very high degree of efficiency, which can translate to significant unrefueled range, as well as being very quiet. General Atomics has publicly touted work in this area in the past, tied in part to its Gambit modular drone family, which it has said could lead to a design capable of staying aloft for up to 60 hours, at least. The Pentagon included AFRL's GHOST award to General Atomics, a cost-plus-fixed-fee deal valued at $99,292,613, in its daily contracting notice today. The full entry reads: 'General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. Poway, California, was awarded a $99,292,613 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for hybrid-electric propulsion ducted fan next-generation intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance/strike unmanned aerial systems (GHOST). This contract provides for the advancement of the hybrid-electric ducted fan next-generation intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance/strike unmanned aerial systems to provide capabilities across a spectrum of contested environments. Work will be performed at Poway, California, and is expected to be completed by Aug. 26, 2028. This contract was a sole source acquisition. Fiscal 2024 research, development, test and appropriations funds in the amount of $26,867,479 are being obligated at time of award. The Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (FA2931-25-C-B035).' Additional details about the GHOST effort, including what plans there might be now to operationalize what the program produces, are scant. TWZ has reached out to AFRL for more information. 'For more than 30 years, General Atomics has advanced unmanned aerial systems in ways never before achieved and often poorly replicated,' C. Mark Brinkley, a spokesperson for General Atomics, told TWZ when asked for more details. 'Satcom [satellite communications] control? Did it. Kinetic strike? That was us. Automatic takeoff and landing? That, too. Unmanned jets? We're building our third.' General Atomics' third jet-powered drone, at least that it has publicly acknowledged, is the YFQ-42A under development now as part of the U.S. Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. It is derived from the experimental XQ-67A drone produced for AFRL's once-secretive Off-Board Sensing Station (OBSS) program. There is also the company's stealthy Avenger uncrewed aircraft. 'We've been promising something impressive related to hybrid-electric propulsion, and now I can't talk about it anymore,' he added. 'That's how it goes with these things. Contrary to what you see on the news, the revolution won't be televised.' In general, hybrid-electric propulsion systems offer improved fuel economy and other benefits by combining fuel-powered engines and electric motors. The system can be paired with batteries of various capacities to achieve its desired performance. Using ducted fans can offer additional performance and other benefits. Hybrid-electric configurations can also help reduce infrared and acoustic signatures on top of other low-observable (stealthy) design features. As noted, General Atomics has been very open in the past about its work on hybrid-electric propulsion involving ducted fans for future stealthy long-endurance drones. 'We are working on hybrid electric propulsion,' Mike Atwood, then Senior Director, Advanced Programs at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI), told Breaking Defense in 2022. 'We believe that GA is going to pioneer a completely new way to propel airborne air-breathing [vehicles]. That will be unveiled in the coming years, but it is a completely disruptive technology. It uses a hybrid electric system where it's basically a Tesla Model S and an RQ-170 got together and you have a fully electric aircraft.' Atwood has since become GA-ASI's Vice President for Advanced Programs. At that time, General Atomics had presented a notional concept for a stealthy flying wing-type drone, referred to as MQ-Next, and pitched as a potential successor to the company's still-popular MQ-9. Two years earlier, the Air Force, the largest known operator of MQ-9s, had announced its desire to stop buying those drones largely over concerns about their vulnerability in future high-end fights, especially one against China in the Pacific. The service has continued to receive additional representatives since then. 'The key to this design is [a] heavy fuel engine, driving very efficient generators and motors. And that way we can get fairly low [fan] speeds, get really good efficiency,' Dave Alexander, GA-ASI's President, also told Breaking Defense in 2022. 'So, this is [a] game changer right here. This is a low-pressure ratio fan, so it's a little tricky and we got to be careful with it. But we believe once we nail this, get the thrust out of it and installed weight, then that'll drive that aircraft [to new lengths.].' Breaking Defense's report added that Alexander had talked about a 60-hour endurance for the MQ-Next concept and described it as particularly well suited for persistent long-range intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions over the hotly contested South China Sea. He also talked about a goal being for the drone to be able to operate from a 3,000-foot-long rough runway in alignment with the Air Force's Agile Combat Employment (ACE) expeditionary and distributed concepts of operations. Last year, Alexander again highlighted General Atomics' work on hybrid-electric propulsion systems utilizing ducted fans in an interview with Aviation Week on the sidelines of the annual Royal International Air Tattoo in the United Kingdom. At that time, he also directly linked these developments to the Gambit family of modular drones, and the Gambit 4 design in particular. General Atomics has presented a variety of very different potential Gambit drones, but they are all designed around a common 'chassis' that includes landing gear, as well as key mission and flight control computer systems. To date, Gambit 4 has been consistently depicted as a stealthy flying wing-type design intended for long-endurance persistent ISR missions that is fully in line with the MQ-Next concept General Atomics had previously shown, as seen in the video below. 'That part of the Gambit series is still out there and we want to make sure we don't lose sight of that,' Alexander said. 'It's very unique.' 'Heavy Fuel Engine 2.0 in development for the MQ-1C Block 25 is not the basis for Gambit 4's hybrid propulsion system, Alexander said,' Aviation Week's report added. 'A different diesel engine with eight cylinders will be developed to generate the power for the electric motors in Gambit 4.' Without knowing more about the work General Atomics is now doing for AFRL as part of GHOST, it is hard to say specifically what kinds of operational tasks the resulting drone might be capable of performing. However, in previous reporting about broadly similar designs, TWZ has highlighted the value that a stealthy, ultra-quiet drone with significant range and endurance could offer for conducting ISR missions, and doing so covertly, in denied areas. The GHOST contract announcement also mentions the potential for the drones to be capable of performing strike missions. The ability to immediately prosecute at least some targets of opportunity would be another major benefit of this kind of uncrewed aircraft. Northrop Grumman subsidiary Scaled Composites is currently working on a different highly efficient and whisper-quiet hybrid-electric flying wing-type drone called the XRQ-73 as part of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program called the Series Hybrid Electric Propulsion AiRcraft Demonstration (SHEPARD). DARPA has been running SHEPARD in cooperation with AFRL, as well as the Office of Naval Research, since 2021. The XRQ-73 design is also a direct outgrowth of the XRQ-72A that Scaled Composites developed for a previous effort called Great Horned Owl (GHO), which the U.S. Intelligence Community's Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) ran from the early 2000s until sometime in the 2010s. AFRL was also involved in GHO. TWZ was the first to report in detail on the XRQ-72A, which featured a hybrid-electric propulsion system with ducted fan propulsors. The U.S. military and U.S. Intelligence Community have a long history of work on ultra-quiet crewed and uncrewed aircraft dating back to the height of the Cold War, and additional relevant developments could well be underway now in the classified realm. It's also worth noting here that the GHOST contract comes amid renewed concerns about the MQ-9's vulnerability even to lower-tier threats following a spate of losses to Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen in the past year or so. With General Atomics now on contract with AFRL for GHOST, it remains to be seen whether more details about that specific effort begin to emerge. Contact the author: joe@
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Yahoo
MQ-1C Gray Eagle Is Shooting Down Drones With Hellfire Missiles In Tests
The MQ-1C Gray Eagle uncrewed aerial system (UAS) has used the AGM-114L Longbow Hellfire missile, in conjunction with its onboard radar, to shoot down a drone in live-fire tests, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) has confirmed to TWZ. While there is currently a major drive in the development of different counter-UAS (C-UAS) systems involving kinetic and non-kinetic solutions, using the Gray Eagle to bring down drones using Hellfire missiles is a new and intriguing development. GA-ASI has 'demonstrated live-fire takedown using Longbow Hellfire from Gray Eagle to eliminate a small UAS,' C. Mark Brinkley, a company spokesman, told TWZ. Arming the adaptable Gray Eagle with Hellfire missiles is not the only counter-UAS option that GA-ASI is currently pursuing with this platform. 'Additionally, our company-funded, live-fire demo of podded miniguns from Gray Eagle STOL (Short Takeoff and Landing) conducted last year offers another interesting and affordable kinetic option for counter-UAS operations,' Brinkley added. 'These flying trash cans simply aren't built to withstand incoming 7.62mm rounds, and the miniguns could offer other armed overwatch options not previously explored.' This is a reference to the Dillon Aero DAP-6 Minigun pods, a weapon system that has been live-fire tested from the GA-ASI Mojave demonstrator drone at the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Ground. The Mojave demonstrator has now led to the Gray Eagle STOL version of MQ-1C, which has a configuration tailored for operations from remote or austere locations with rough strips and limited logistical support, with an emphasis on supporting various kinds of expeditionary and distributed operations. More recently, General Atomics has touted the Gray Eagle STOL's capabilities in experiments on aircraft carriers and big-deck amphibious assault ships. General Atomics' Brinkley said the company plans to unveil a new kinetic option for Gray Eagle STOL 'in the next few months that would further lower the price tag for C-UAS response, while also increasing accuracy and flexibility.' It's unclear if this is a reference to the aforementioned Longbow Hellfire, although the reference to reduced costs would seem to point to another, cheaper option, perhaps a laser-guided rocket. As well as kinetic and non-kinetic means of bringing down hostile drones, GA-ASI has also adapted onboard sensors to allow its drones to detect, track, and then engage the UAS in the first place. 'We have conducted numerous flight tests using our Lynx and EagleEye radar systems for target acquisition and tracking of small UAS,' Brinkley confirmed. The EagleEye synthetic aperture radar can detect and track ground targets out to 50 miles and maritime targets out to 124 miles, although its capability against aerial threats is not presently known. However, with a new active electronically scanned array (AESA) antenna and associated software for EagleEye being developed, this will further increase its range and add to its multi-mode performance. These flight tests are especially significant in that they have utilized the proprietary GA-ASI radars in an air-to-air mode to provide detection, including in the critical look-down mode, and onboard weapons cueing. Meanwhile, GA-ASI is also continuing to work on a drone-mounted podded laser for C-UAS missions. The podded laser, which the company says is now in development as a concept, was shown mounted on an MQ-9B SkyGuardian drone in a graphic at the Air Force Association's 2025 Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colorado, last month, and again this month at the Sea-Air-Space Conference in National Harbor, Maryland. GA-ASI appears to be primarily pitching this pod for fleet defense against one-way attack drones. General Atomics Unveils Laser Combat Module for MQ-9B Drone:: #LaserWeapon #DroneDefense #GeneralAtomics #HELWS #MilitaryTech #DirectedEnergy #RedSea #UkraineConflict #AirDefense #DefenseTechnology #Drones #Tryzub #CruiseMissileDefense — DefenseMirror (@DefenseMirror) April 14, 2025 Brinkley says the company already has 'a very mature laser technology' for this application. However, it should be noted that, in general, airborne lasers have been much harder to realize than originally envisioned, with many programs related to them cancelled on technical grounds, as you can read about here. At this point, however, the standout item is the live-fire trials of Longbow Hellfire aboard a Gray Eagle drone for the C-UAS mission. Bearing in mind the fast-growing trend for harnessing new ways of neutralizing the drone threat, combining the Gray Eagle and Lockheed Martin's AGM-114L Longbow Hellfire for this application makes a lot of sense. At the same time, there is already a precedent for using Longbow Hellfire, which is millimeter-wave radar-guided instead of laser-guided like other Hellfire variants, to shoot down drones. While the AGM-114 Hellfire was developed as an air-to-ground weapon and has been mainly used as such, the Longbow variant does have an air defense role against drones. Notably, Israel has been using the AH-64 Apache in attack helicopters in an air defense capacity for years, including one well-known shootdown of a Hezbollah drone close to the Syrian border. An AH-64 'Apache' Attack Helicopter with the Israeli Air Force conducting a Successful Interception of an inbound Hezbollah Attack Drone, this morning over Northern Israel. — OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) August 25, 2024 In October last year, the U.S. Army published a video showing its AH-64D Longbow Apache helicopters practicing detecting and destroying enemy aerial drones while forward deployed to the Middle East, a region where the drone threat — especially from one-way attack munitions or 'kamikaze drones' — has exploded in recent months. . @USArmy Soldiers engage an unmanned aerial system (UAS) from an AH-64 with upgraded Hellfire missile during Red Sands training exercise in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. @usarmycentral — U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) September 30, 2024 The Army video appears to show a variant or modification of the Longbow Hellfire, with initial cuing for its millimeter-wave radar seeker provided by the Apache's AN/APG-78 Longbow mast-mounted radar system. The same radar can detect and track aerial targets, such as lower-flying helicopters, and also aerial drones. The Longbow Hellfire also has a demonstrated capability to engage aerial threats when launched from other platforms, including ones on the ground. More recently, the U.S. Navy carried out a crash program to enable its Freedom class Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) armed with AGM-114Ls to employ them against drones. The LCSs originally received the radar-guided Hellfires to help defend against swarms of small boats. While the U.S. military still has significant stocks of AGM-114Ls in inventory, the missile is out of production. Lockheed Martin's new AGM-179A Joint Air-to-Ground Missile (JAGM), which has a dual-mode laser and millimeter-wave radar guidance package, is now entering U.S. service as a successor to other Hellfire variants. It could also supplant the Longbow version, including in the air-to-air role. At this point, it should be recalled that the U.S. Air Force has successfully integrated the AIM-9X Sidewinder heat-seeking air-to-air missile onto its MQ-9 Reaper drone, this combination scoring its first ever air-to-air kill in an exercise in 2017. Not long after that, the service announced that it was looking to give at least some of these unmanned aircraft the ability to take on aerial threats, providing them with a significant self-protection capability that could also be complementary to the drone-hunting developments for the MQ-1C. While it's not clear how the UAS target was detected and tracked in the Gray Eagle C-UAS live-fire experiment, specifically, it may be that one of the aforementioned Lynx or EagleEye radar systems, produced by GA-ASI, was used. In another scenario, the radar could be used for the detection of a drone threat, with the Multi-Spectral Targeting System (MTS) then used for identification and laser designation, should laser weapons be used on the Gray Eagle in the future. However, the engagement played out, the potential of a drone-killing combination of Gray Eagle and Longbow Hellfire is compelling. For the most part, C-UAS systems are ground-based, meaning their flexibility and responsiveness are necessarily limited. In contrast, a drone like the Gray Eagle can be redirected to provide a counter-drone capability wherever it might be most needed. The drones can also be forward-based, operating very close to ground forces. They can then be launched fairly rapidly in response to incoming threats. This is especially the case for the Gray Eagle STOL version. The short-field capabilities found in the Gray Eagle STOL were ported over from the Mojave demonstrator, the stated performance of which includes a takeoff run of 400 feet for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions, or 1,000 feet when armed with 12 Hellfire missiles. Furthermore, a Gray Eagle drone carrying Hellfire missiles — or a combination of these and other weapons — would not be a single-role platform, as many more traditional C-UAS systems are. As well as intercepting drones, the Gray Eagle could offer armed escort for ground forces and provide overwatch with its sensors. Highly significant is also the endurance of these drones, which are able to stay on station for 24 hours or more. This persistence is ideal for providing surveillance in a C-UAS scenario, as well as screening for drones transiting a given area, creating something like a combat air patrol (CAP). While fighter aircraft have increasingly taken on a drone intercept role with great success, they are very costly and can only stay on station for short periods of time without refueling support. On the other hand, they can run-down drones in scenarios where a Gray Eagle could not. Still, for lower volume threats and for point defense applications over or near a specific target area, the MQ-1C could be extremely valuable. The Longbow Hellfire does remain a higher-end solution for dealing with lower-end drones. As we have discussed in the past, it costs around $215,000 to buy a single, basic AGM-114, with the radar-guided Longbow models costing even more. Still, this is far cheaper than common air-to-air missiles, which have at lease double the cost. In the case of the workhorse AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM), the unit price is around $1 million a round. This is all very likely driving interest in an even cheaper kinetic C-UAS option for Gray Eagle. The Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II (APKWS II) laser-guided rocket, for example, is far less costly than a Hellfire, coming in at around $25,000-30,0000 per round. A rocket-based weapon like APKWS II would also provide the Gray Eagle with a much larger magazine of effectors, although only one drone could be engaged at a time due to the type's laser guidance. Still, getting into a position to employ APKWS II would be more of a challenge for MQ-1C than a fighter aircraft, especially rapidly against multiple targets. F-16s have been effective at employing APKWS II against drones over the Red Sea. A new APKWS II model that offers pseudo-fire-and-forget capability with the help of an additional infrared seeker is in the works, which will simplify engagements and reduce the time it takes to prosecute them. Potentially even more important for overcoming these cost and magazine depth issues are laser weapons, like the aforementioned podded design that General Atomics is working on now, provided this challenging technology can be mastered. While there are still many questions around GA-ASI's Gray Eagle/Longbow Hellfire C-UAS trials, they underscore how drones themselves are increasingly being seen as an effective counter to the UAS threat, especially at the lower end of the scale. Contact the author: thomas@
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
MQ-20 Avenger Tests ‘Hivemind' AI In Orange Flag Exercise
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) has revealed that its jet-powered MQ-20 Avenger drone, equipped with U.S. government-provided autonomy software, took part in a recent Orange Flag large force test exercise. This is the latest milestone for the Avenger, which has been heavily involved in the testing of different artificial-intelligence-driven autonomy systems for several years now. GA-ASI announced today that one of two company-owned MQ-20s, with the so-called 'reference autonomy stack' software, flew in a demonstration at Orange Flag 25-1, which took place at Edwards Air Force Base, California, from Feb. 19-21. You can read more about the Orange Flag series, which is focused on developmental test activities, in this previous article. Once integrated in the MQ-20, Shield AI's reference autonomy stack — which included a pilot vehicle interface (PVI) — demonstrated autonomous flight operation, with a focus on air-to-air engagements. 'The government-provided PVI enabled seamless control and monitoring of the autonomy stack, highlighting the interoperability and flexibility of GA-ASI's UCAV ecosystem,' the company said in a statement. 'The Shield AI stack demonstrated autonomy skills for safe administrative phases of flight.' 'This demonstration marks a significant achievement in our ongoing efforts to operationalize autonomy for UCAVs,' added GA-ASI Vice President of Advanced Programs Michael Atwood. 'Flying the government reference autonomy stack at Orange Flag 25-1 and utilizing the government-provided PVI underscores our commitment to delivering robust and adaptable autonomy solutions for the warfighter.' An important part of the demonstration was to prove that the MQ-20 — and, by extension, other GA-ASI drones — can be rapidly reconfigured from using company-written software to government-provided or other vendors' software as required. This has important implications in terms of flexibility for future drones once in service, so they can receive new software — enabling new capabilities and/or enhanced interoperability — very rapidly. Speaking to TWZ at the Air & Space Forces Association's 2025 Warfare Symposium, a spokesperson from Shield AI said that the process of integrating the reference autonomy stack in the MQ-20 took 'about three weeks.' The demonstration also showed that the MQ-20 can rapidly swap between autonomy systems mid-flight, as C. Mark Brinkley, a General Atomics spokesman, explained to TWZ. 'During Orange Flag, we were able to fly both a government [AI] architecture as well as sort of mid-flight switch over to the Shield AI software and let that software take over.' Brinkley also told TWZ why he considers the MQ-20 an ideal platform for these kinds of tests, which are intended to feed into the Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. 'The interesting thing about MQ-20 is it's sort of still ahead of its time as far as jet UCAVs goes. We continue to use it as a CCA surrogate, and I suspect we will continue to do that for some time. We have two company aircraft that we own and can fly and use whenever we want. The ability to use the MQ-20 the way that you would a CCA in terms of loading on software, experimenting with autonomy actions, experimenting with different types of missions, like we did in Orange Flag, and then be able to take all that data off of a real airplane, and go back into the virtual world and make changes as necessary, it's really been a game-changer for our ability to move that forward.' 'For us, it's really using an aircraft that exists,' Brinkley added. 'We don't have to wait until there are some new aircraft. I mean, we're building our CCA. We have plenty of aircraft out there. Having two company-owned MQ-20s, you might look at them and say, 'Well, that's too big for what the CCA program might be, they might cost too much. It's not exactly what you're looking for.' That's fine. But in terms of trying to get to autonomy and autonomous flight and autonomous missions, you can do a lot of it in the virtual environment, but really having a real aircraft to team with them has been unique for us.' In the context of the MQ-20 demonstration at Orange Flag, the drone's reference autonomy stack was a product of Shield AI, a relatively new, fast-moving aerospace company that you can read more about here. The stack is referred to by that company as Hivemind Enterprise. Shield AI's original Hivemind was an 'AI pilot' that has been used in real-world fighter aircraft test flights linked to advanced U.S. Air Force programs, as well as to control a host of Kratos drones and in Shield AI's own MQ-35 V-BAT drone. Hivemind is also expected to feed into the Air Force's emerging Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. In the words of Shield AI's co-founder, president, and chief growth officer Brandon Tseng, Hivemind 'enables aircraft to accomplish missions fully autonomously without GPS, without communications, without a remote pilot. What do I mean by fully autonomous mission execution? In the example of our NOVA quadcopter, it would go inside buildings, and it would find threats, it would map out the building, it would clear the building all by itself without anybody piloting it. GPS didn't matter, communications didn't matter, it would accomplish the mission.' From the start, Hivemind was intended as a core central system within an aircraft and one that can be leveraged across many different platforms. In this way, Hivemind first began to be installed in small quadcopters and then in increasingly more complex drones, all the way up to the MQ-20, as well as crewed surrogate aircraft. In addition to providing 'self-piloting' technology for aircraft, Hivemind enables cooperative teaming and swarming. Using Hivemind AI, a group of drones can execute a mission, working together dynamically, reading and reacting to each other, to the battlefield, to the adversarial threats, and so on. This can be accomplished at computer speeds. Hivemind is designed to be agnostic to the original equipment manufacturer, and the company has said in the past that it wants the AI technology 'to fly on every single CCA.' However, Hivemind is just one of a number of AI agents that has been flown in the MQ-20. 'We've proven that we've been able to fly a lot of different autonomy engines and autonomy pilots in the aircraft,' Brinkley adds. 'It's flown Skyborg, it's flown the DARPA CODE engine. It's flown our own AI.' Brinkley is also cognizant of the fact that AI software from more than one supplier might find its way into the CCA program and into other GA-ASI drones. 'With software, it's not a winner-take-all kind of game. Just like when you take your phone out and you're running an operating system on your phone, but you and I might have different maps, we might have different email programs, we might have different games that we play or whatever. There's not going to be just one way to do this. Across the services, across different nations, they may all want to do things differently.' Whoever provides it, AI will be especially important to achieving the Air Force's ambition for crewed-uncrewed teaming, including having fighters, like the F-35, operate as inflight 'quarterbacks' for these advanced drones. For the Air Force, how pilots in crewed aircraft will actually manage CCAs during operations has emerged as an increasingly important question and has already yielded related trials, as you can read about here. The Air Force is also still very much in the process of developing new concepts of operations and tactics, techniques, and procedures for employing CCA drones operationally. How the drones will fit into the service's force structure and be utilized in routine training and other day-to-day peacetime activities, along with what the maintenance and logistical demands will be, also remains to be seen. Questions about in-flight command and control have emerged as particularly important ones to answer in the near term. The latest edition of the Orange Flag test exercise further underlines the importance of the MQ-20 as a testbed for future autonomous collaborative platforms and adds yet another platform to the growing roster that is using different iterations of Shield AI's Hivemind AI technology. Contact the author: thomas@
