Air Force commanders will have greater flexibility to support the warfighter by quickly transforming conventional planes into unmanned systems – and back again – through a technology being developed with support from the Air Force Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer Program.

Pennsylvania-based RE2 Inc. developed the Common Aircraft Retrofit for Novel Autonomous Control to enable the low-cost, temporary deployment of unmanned aircraft. This capability, known as CARNAC, could widely expand the tactics and strategies available in battlefield situations by replacing a seat in a normally manned aircraft’s cockpit with a robot.