In the desert of New Mexico the men and women of the 846th Test Squadron, 704th Test Group, Arnold Engineering Development Complex send test articles strapped to rocket sleds hurtling along rail tracks up to 10 miles long.
Some tests, such as ejection seat and target penetration testing, send debris across the desert; which is catalogued as part of the data collection for the test.
Project Zero is an effort by the 846 TS and the Strategic Development Planning and Experimentation Office, or SDPE, of the Air Force Research Laboratory, which aims to automate the task of identifying and tracking both planned and unplanned debris from tests at the Holloman High Speed Test Track, or HHSTT, with the use of small, unmanned aircraft systems, or sUAS, better known as drones, and machine-learning algorithms, a subset of artificial intelligence, or AI.