Autonomous AI agents for Integrated Air and Missile Defence using BAE INTeACT

The Challenge

Integrated Air and Missile Defence (IAMD) must bring together sensing, decision-making, and kinetic and non-kinetic effects to defend against increasingly complex and diverse airborne threats — aircraft, ballistic and cruise missiles, drones and other aerial threats. Operators need layered, timely defence that detects, tracks, classifies and plans responses before threats reach their targets, across land, air and sea, with open interfaces into the wider IAMD framework. That is the capability gap set out in BAE Systems’ Innovation Exchange challenge: Integrated Air and Missile Defence.

The Solution

NquiringMinds answered that challenge with fully autonomous AI agents for threat classification and planning, developed with partners Origami Labs and Aeris UK and fully integrated with BAE Systems INTeACT — BAE’s next-generation combat management system and open SDK for warship command and control. Building on NQM’s earlier INTeACT SDK Codeathon work and the MAXAD multi-agent analytics capability, the engagement embeds AI agents into the INTeACT tactical picture so they can classify threats and support planning under operationally relevant IAMD scenarios.

Outcomes

The agents’ performance was formally evaluated in a threat-classification and planning scenario against INTeACT-integrated workflows. The project is active (January–June 2026) and strengthens the route from open-architecture CMS integration to exploitable IAMD decision support for BAE Systems programmes.

In Detail

BAE Systems’ IAMD Innovation Exchange challenge asks industry to show innovative capability that supports timely, successful Integrated Air and Missile Defence against a widening threat set, with solutions that work across domains and interoperate through open interfaces. NQM’s response centres on autonomous agents that classify threats and contribute to planning, running fully integrated with INTeACT so they consume and act on the shared tactical picture rather than a siloed lab dataset.

Integration with INTeACT — BAE’s next-generation combat management system for warships, designed with open systems architectures so new technologies can be adopted quickly — lets the agents operate in the same command-and-control environment crews use to track, analyse and respond to threats. Formal evaluation then measured agent performance on threat classification and planning tasks in that integrated setting, providing an evidence base for further maturation with BAE Systems.

Challenge brief: Innovation Exchange challenge: Integrated Air and Missile Defence. INTeACT SDK context: BAE Systems Software Development Kit.