Hey everyone! Thanks for taking the time to stop by. You may have seen the announcement on our LinkedIn, but we were invited to participate in Technology Readiness Experimentation (T-REX) 24-2 at Camp Atterbury, Indiana Aug. 19-28 to demonstrate our ecosystem of solutions to the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD (R&E)) and select military units, including the Indiana National Guard. During T-REX, we demo’d FLEETFORGE, REDQUEEN, OBELISK, and YELLOWJACKET + BROODBOX.
For those unfamiliar, T-REX is a focused experimentation line of effort developed by OUSD to support the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve (RDER) initiative, a key program driving rapid testing and adoption of critical technologies across the department. T-REX 24-2 brought together Department of Defense (DoD) innovation leaders; end users & subject matter experts from various services; representatives from policy bodies and congressional offices; sitting US Representatives and Senators; and other stakeholders critical to innovation efforts across the DoD. The invite-only event brought in participants to showcase technologies that align with one of the RDER Joint Warfighting Concepts enabling rapid development of technologies to meet critical capability gaps.
Our onsite participation was led by Director of Field Operations, Rob Tisdale, with pivotal support from engineering all-stars, Eric Johnson and Kevin Strother. Together, the team successfully demonstrated our entire product suite, generating significant engagement across the first week of the event. “T-REX provided such an amazing opportunity to get our software-driven vehicles in front of the leaders in the DoD space and show them the depth and breadth of our solutions,” shared Tisdale. Critically, DoD and broader United States Government (USG) leaders were provided the opportunity to get a unique, hands-on perspective of various technologies from our DARKHIVE ecosystem. This allowed for a deeper understanding of our existing capabilities, remaining technological challenges, and how our ecosystem can support DoD and USG-level requirements.
Highlighting the experimentation-focused first week of the event, our integrated YELLOWJACKET UAS and BROODBOX control application solutions successfully flew an almost 15-minute mission, validating the platform’s designed flight time and mission profile. During the mission, the YELLOWJACKET successfully navigated dense, simulated urban dwellings to provide observation and identify potential threats or targets. Utilizing both its standard camera and thermal imaging capabilities, the YELLOWJACKET impressed onlookers who were able to experience, first-hand, how simple the products were to fly and control with no prior training. With successful flights both in the field and inside testing facilities, the YELLOWJACKET proved that an effectual situational awareness vehicle does not need to require a licensed drone pilot or specialist. According to a US Army Staff Sergeant, who was not a trained drone pilot, "The Yellowjacket was one of the ‘sickest’ things I've seen come through this event! Super easy to use and fun to fly."
FLEETFORGE, the open, accessible, and secure fleet management and DevSecOps platform in our DARKHIVE ecosystem, was also put to the test to send live updates to the experimentation tactical area during the demo. The team was thrilled to provide Congressman Greg Pence a hands-on demo of the product suite to showcase how the complete system, powered by FLEETFORGE, can support the men and women in the field across a variety of environments and dynamic situations. Bringing the ecosystem concept to life, FLEETFORGE successfully pushed out an HITL software update mid-demo, validating the ability to send secure updates “over the air” to edge devices utilizing the FLEETFORGE fleet management and DevSecOps platform.
The piece de resistance of T-REX 24-2 for our DARKHIVE team was the successful deployment of a dual OBELISK mission flight which simultaneously utilized the ATAK UAS Tool to captured and relayed information during the flight. This mission tied in the integration of our REDQUEEN voice user interface software into the ATAK system and was executed in alignment with the OBELISK operating concept. This specific demo not only involved a significant portion of our hardware and software ecosystem, but, perhaps more importantly, illustrated the direction our team at DARKHIVE strives to lead the industry in.
And with that, we will wrap it up with some shout-outs to our incredibly driven, focused, and skilled engineers who make all of this – and so much more – possible. Huge thanks to Rob Tisdale, Eric Johnson, Kevin Strother, David Moroniti, Mitchell DeHaven, Caleb Cittadino, Corrigan Johnson, Alex Woods, Bart Gallet, Chase Kunz, Ben Grocholsky, Eli Vigdorchik, and Shaun Cosgrove!
"We love working with you guys; never have a reason to doubt any of the work you guys do.”
– Emerging Technology Assessor for OUSD (R&E)
See you out there.
The DARKHIVE Team
Congressman Greg Pence, representative for the 6th District of Indiana, learning about DARKHIVE’s YELLOWJACKET drone and software ecosystem during T-REX.
End-users testing the YELLOWJACKET, without prior training, and discovering how digestible the hardware and software ecosystem system.
Users taking a moment to get familiar with DARKHIVE’s OBELISK vehicle.
Rob Tisdale, Director of Field Operations, showcasing the YELLOWJACKET + BROODBOX interface and highlighting the time and care put into the end-user experience.
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