By Theresa Hitchens on March 05, 2021 at 3:20 PM AFRL image of autonomous swarming munitions WASHINGTON: Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is shifting the focus of its Golden Horde program from testing its own swarming weapons to developing a digital environment, nicknamed Colosseum, to test vendors bringing their own concepts. “What we are looking to do is beginning a phase of an open, collaborative autonomy architecture, and this government-owned reference architecture is really going to be an environment where more players can come and compete their own versions of what autonomous collaborative weapons should be,” AFRL Director Brig. Gen. Heather Pringle said last week during the Air Force Association’s annual winter meeting.