India has successfully test-flown an upgraded version of its Lakshya unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV.
Scientists from the Indian Defense Research and Development Organization, who developed the Lakshya, launched it Feb. 6 at the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur in Orissa’s coastal Balasore district, the Indo-Asian News Service reported.
The Lakshya is a subsonic reusable system remote-controlled UAV for air-to-air and ground-to-air firing practice and is designed to help train pilots and air defense personnel in engaging targets. The Lakshya was inducted into the Indian Air Force in 2000. The Navy and the Army also field Lakshyas.
The Lakshya has a range of 370 miles, a flight ceiling of 29,504 feet and a maximum speed of Mach 0.8. In 2003 India began to develop a battlefield reconnaissance version of the drone.
The drone test at the Integrated Test Range included the Lakshya in an air defense exercise to test the UAV’s accuracy in different environments.
Israel has purchased several Lakshya drones
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department on Friday unveiled what could become its latest weapon for fighting crime — a high-tech model plane equipped with a video camera — and said a SWAT team will begin testing the new surveillance technology within two months.
The 4-pound plane has a tiny camera in its belly that can be used for everything from overhead surveillance of buildings and tracking fugitives to searching for lost hikers and missing children, sheriff’s officials said.
The “SkySeer” will be donated to the department by Chang Industry for field testing. The company — whose president, Yu-Wen Chang, is a resident of Rancho Palos Verdes — worked with the Sheriff’s Department for about three years to produce the unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV.
Source and more info: DailyBreeze
A UAV based on the tilt rotor V22 has made its first flight. Called the Eagle Eye, this UAV is designed for use from ships. The first customer is the U.S. Coast Guard, which is buying 69 of them, to operate off 46 ships. The manufacturer (a consortium of Bell and Boeing) is also offering the vehicle to the U.S. Navy, as well as Britain and France. The Eagle Eye weighs 1.2 tons, is 18 feet long and has a 24 foot wingspan. Top speed is 400 kilometers an hour, and maximum endurance is six hours. It has a range of 1,500 kilometers from the ship that launched it. Each Eagle Eye costs about $12 million (or some $14 million when you include control and support equipment.) What sold the Eagle Eye to the Coast Guard was the ability of the Eagle Eye to get to a distant location quickly, and then stay there for several hours. This is useful if chasing down smugglers or other suspicious ships. Development of the Eagle Eye began in 1998. The first one is expected to enter service next year. One potential problem is the complexity of the tilt rotor mechanism, which has delayed development of the V22.
Source: Strategy Page
A Maryland Army National Guard detachment operating the Shadow 200 tactical unmanned aerial vehicle will officially open for business here Feb. 5, with a 2 p.m. ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new armory located next to Gate 3. The event will feature a non-flying display of the aircraft perched on a 40′ long rail launcher, a ground-control station in a Humvee van, video of the aircraft in action and soldiers who flew Shadow last year in Iraq.
“I think it’s awesome,” says Sgt. Ericka Gillespie, an Iraq vet from the Shadow Tactical UAV platoon, who likes the system’s ability to keep pilots out of harm’s way. “We don’t have to have someone up there flying it.” The platoon mission commander, Specialist James Sirmons, says Shadow is “amazing. Its use will just keep growing in the future.”
The Shadow TUAV platoon of Charlie Company, 629th Military Intelligence battalion, won’t begin flying the aircraft in southern Maryland until at least June, according to Col. Charles Schulze of the Guard’s Aviation Brigade at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., where the system is staged. A transitional, tensioned-fabric hangar and modular office space at the Webster Field annex will have to be completed to house the unit.
Construction of the transitional facilities could get underway as early as February and will take four to five months to complete, says Schulze, who is Maryland’s State Army Aviation Officer. Platoon headquarters will remain in the armory, known officially as the Patuxent Readiness Center.
The Shadow TUAV platoon, which returned last October from a year-long Iraq deployment, will be an operational unit focused on training rather than testing, according to Schulze. Guard soldiers will train mostly on Saturday and Sunday, with the possibility of an occasional weekday flight, he says. Only five or six full-time support soldiers will be stationed here during the week.
Schulze says the TUAV platoon is moving to Pax River because of its “UAV-friendly environment.” He notes that Pax has far more radar capability and available airspace than Aberdeen, which is devoted primarily to testing artillery. “Pax already has a training area established for VC-6 [which flies the Pioneer UAV], and they can help us develop our operations,” he says. “This is a great opportunity to learn from the Navy’s experience.”
The RQ-7B Shadow 200 looks like a smaller version of the venerable RQ-2B Pioneer,, first deployed in its “A” incarnation by the Navy in 1986 and now flown by the VC-6 detachment at Webster Field. Shadow is 11′2″ in length with a 12′9″ wingspan, while Pioneer is 14′ long with a 17′ wingspan. Both aircraft have a similar downward-sloping nose, rectangular-section fuselage, and pusher propeller spinning between twin tail booms.
Source and more info: dcmilitary
Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk underwent sea trials recently that could position the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) as an anti-smuggling asset.
Northrop said Wednesday that the RQ-4 flew three test flights over the Pacific recently to shake out the aircraft’s maritime software modes designed to pick out small ships and other targets in vast stretches of ocean.
“Surveillance over the ocean is much more difficult than over land because you have a moving target, such as a ship, against a moving background, the ocean,” said program manager Bill Beck. “During test flights, we proved that from an altitude of 60,000 feet, Global Hawk can track a ship or pinpoint a buoy in various sea states.”
While generally used for military operations, the Global Hawk could provide narcotics agencies and coast guards around the world with an efficient sentry that can spot and track people smugglers and drug runners.
Suspicious vessels currently must be checked out by dispatching a patrol boat or aircraft.
The aircraft’s high-altitude capabilities keep it above storms and prevailing sea winds for more than 35 hours at a time and a range of several thousand nautical miles.
Source and more info: UPI
Cyber Defense Systems, Inc. (OTC BB: CYDF), a designer and developer of next-generation unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), announced the sale of its CyberBug™ Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to the Gaston County, North Carolina, Sheriff’s office.
The CyberBug will augment the response and rescue efforts of the Gaston County Sheriff’s department. The ability to give real-time information and provide real-time video and patrol coverage over a much wider area than previously available will provide much more comprehensive levels of protection to both the citizens and law enforcement of Gaston County.
The Gaston County Sheriff’s Department said they were eager to get the program started and will begin training its first operator next week. Assistant Chief Jeff Isenhour believes the CyberBug will be helpful to their department in many areas. “The applications we have in mind for the CyberBug include a long list of missions, just to name a few, we would use the CyberBug for routine surveillance, lost persons, tactical operations, open area drug eradication, and overhead crime scene photography.”
The Cyber Defense UAV’s intended applications were to provide military ground forces with immediate and efficient surveillance from the sky. Ongoing testing and real-time demonstrations are creating new possible uses for the CyberBug. Search and rescue, traffic control and expanded investigations are a few of the uses for the CyberBug. The CyberBug can serve as a means of identifying and tracking possible threats to the environment such as forest fires or as security measures to deter crop tampering. The previous methods of tracking and surveying these areas are accomplished primarily with multiple patrol cars, planes or helicopters, both of which come with high maintenance and much greater expense. Less than the cost of a patrol car or the expense to deploy one helicopter, several CyberBugs can be used in its place, offering faster surveillance over a wide area of terrain. This enables forestry experts to identify possible environmental threats immediately, gaining accurate topographic information and limiting potential threats to the area.
Source and more info:
The T-15 is a composite molded, high performance UAV. It was specifically designed to fill the niche for a HMMWV portable, medium endurance (12+ hours) vehicle capable of a 10 pound payload capacity. Under the command of Cloud Cap Technology Piccolo Plus auto-pilot, the T-15 is the most stable UAV in its class, having flight characteristics as forgiving as a trainer. A generous fuselage and hard points on each wing provide ample payload placement opportunities
After three months of analysis by the US Army the results are in. STARA Technologies’ miniature guided parachute system took second place at the Precision Airdrop Technology Conference and Demonstration (PATCAD 2005) held at the Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in Yuma, Arizona.
“This is a big day for STARA,” said the company’s President Colin McCavitt. “We’re a small company with a new, innovative approach to airdrop. At Yuma we showed we could play with the big boys.”
STARA’s performance was particularly exceptional because the company’s Mosquito guided parachute system was entirely self-financed. The other systems presented at PATCAD 2005, by contrast, were heavily supported by Department of Defense funding. Commented McCavitt, “If we came in second place without a dollar of DOD money behind us, imagine what we’d be able to do with some real support.”
The small size of the STARA Mosquito makes it unique. Most guided parachute systems are designed to drop heavy payloads weighing between 2,000 and 10,000 pounds; STARA’s Mosquito delivers payloads between 5 and 20 pounds and is the only system small enough to deliver payloads dropped from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). “It’s amazing how many applications are out there for ‘mini airdrop,’” said STARA’s Chief Engineer Glen Bailey. “The military has hundreds of miniature sensors they’d like to get into the battlefield and up until now there was no way to deliver them. The Mosquito gives them that capability and the results the Army presented today confirm that we can get the job done.”
Source and more info: Yahoo
A UND effort to receive a $3.4 million Centers of Excellence grant gained some ground Friday, as the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences announced the equivalent of $1 million in support for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) studies.
The deal with Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems and Sensors will also give UND access to a UAV. According to Bruce Smith, dean of the Odegard School, the Odegard School, the School of Engineering and Mines, the Northern Plains Center for Behavioral Research and Center for Innovation have joined forces to set up a Center of Excellence for UAVs.
Source and more info: Dakota Student
