US Army will combine UAVs and UGVs (umanned ground vehicles) together at Ft Benning in 2007 to run first ever tests of a combined robotic assault.
The tests will use Yamaha R-Max UAVs as the UAV elements, together with DARPA supplied vehicles, type as yet undetermined.
The operational tests will take place in a simulated urban environment situated in the Mt McKinney environment of the Ft Benning, Ga reservation - an area of hills, says Ray Wall, Chief of Systems Integration Division at the Army’s Aviation Applied Technology Directorate, Ft Eustis, Va..
The concept demonstration operation will look at mutual ‘feeding’ of data between air and ground vehicles, and will explore the integration of autonomous ‘behaviors’ by the vehicles, Wall says.
‘By that I mean you won’t have a single operator for a single UAV. These guys will work out what they need to do for themselves. Say one needs to replace a UAV shot down that was doing communications - then one of them will switch over and take over on its own.’
The Army is exploring a number of breakthrough concepts based on the use of CDAS (cognitive decision aiding systems) in the tests, which will also use helicopters in the airborne command and control role.
Source and more info: shephard
Many European nations have contributed troops to help out in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, like the United States, they are using the opportunity to try out new weapons and equipment. The Netherlands, for example, is sending German made Aladin UAVs to it troops in Afghanistan. This is a mini-UAV, weighing seven pounds. Powered by batteries, the Aladin can stay in the air about 45 minutes per sortie, and travel up to five kilometers from its ground station. The Aladin operates at low altitudes (100-2,000 feet) and has vidcams that can see at night as well as in daylight. The Dutch army has bought five ground stations and ten UAVs for the Afghanistan operations.
Source and more info: strategypage
CNN reports operators lost contact with the $6.5 million UAV about 3 am Tuesday. US Customs and Border Protection spokesman Michael Friel said the wreckage was located by a government helicopter about three hours later.
No one on the ground was injured, and nothing was damaged — well, except for the UAV… but officials didn’t immediately know the extent of damage to the vehicle.
Investigators are looking into the cause of the downing.
Officials said while it was flying, the Predator B has aided in apprehending nearly 1,800 illegal immigrants, as well as the seizure of over four tons of marijuana.
The General Atomics Aeronautical Systems MQ-9 Predator unmanned air vehicle (UAV) operated by US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) along the Mexico border crashed in the early morning of 25 April. The $6.8 million UAV was being used to detect illegal immigrants and drug smugglers crossing the US-Mexico border in Arizona.
The ground station lost communication with the UAV at 02:50 in the morning, about 8.5h into a 10-12h mission patrolling the border at an altitude of 12,000-15,000ft (3,600-4,600m). The wreckage was found about 16km (10 miles) north of Nogales, Mexico at around 06:20.
The UAV came down close to its location when the link was lost, suggesting it crashed soon after losing communications. The vehicle did not conduct the recovery procedures programmed into the flight-control computer, which should have resulted in it coming down in a pre-determined area, says the CBP.
Source and more info: flightglobal
Calls On Gov’t To Remove TFR While UAVs Are Grounded
Stating that an accident Tuesday involving a US Customs and Border Patrol Predator B UAV reinforces their position that UAVs must meet manned aircraft safety standards, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association is calling on the FAA to revoke TFRs currently in place along the US-Mexico border while the fleet is grounded as investigators determine why the unmanned plane crashed.
“This crash highlights the safety concerns we’ve voiced all along,” said Andy Cebula, AOPA executive vice president of government affairs. “The FAA should not permit UAV operations until they are certified to the same level of safety as manned aircraft.”
“Thankfully, in this accident no one in the air or on the ground was hurt,” Cebula added. “But just think that if a pilot had been flying legally under the TFR and the UAV hit the aircraft from behind and above — the pilot would have had no chance to see and avoid the uncontrolled UAV.”
Source and more info: aero-news
CSP Inc. MultiComputer Division, the leading supplier of rugged embedded clusters, today announced the 3000 SERIES, its 2nd generation of FastCluster systems. Building upon the momentum of the 2000 SERIES, the new VXS systems deliver unrivaled performance in bi-section bandwidth and processing density while preserving absolute code reuse at the application layer. The 3000 SERIES is targeted to high performance digital signal processing (DSP), SIGINT, radar and sonar applications in airborne, shipboard and UAV platforms where space and power are at a premium.
The 3000 SERIES redefines processing per-cubic-foot-per-watt and interconnect bi-section bandwidth by integrating the reconfigurable processing capabilities of Xilinx’s FPGA technology with the latest Freescale Multi-Core processors and Myri-10G on a VXS platform. With its built-in 10-Gigabit Ethernet technology, the 3000 SERIES supports the DOD’s vision of “systems of systems” in which embedded systems are not designed, deployed, and used in isolation but rather in a cooperative way.
Source and more info: yahoo
News 4 has learned that an un-manned air vehicle belonging to the Border Patrol has gone down.
An agent says it happened between midnight and 6 Tuesday morning while it was patrolling the Arizona/Mexico border.
It crashed on Morning Star Ranch, a remote area about 10 miles east of Interstate 19.
The aircraft was the only UAV the Border Patrol owned. It had just been unveiled in September of last year.
Agents say the UAV was extensively damaged. The aircraft itself was worth 10 million dollars.
Source and more info: kvoa
It may be just what is needed as a Navy force protection weapon, as an armament for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or the tool for ground forces to engage mobile threats. One thing is for sure. In a test on Wednesday, April 12, the world’s smallest, tactical, “fire-and-forget” precision-guided missile impacted its 2-meter target (eight inches from dead center) at the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division China Lake, Calif., after being launched from 1000 meters away.Weighing only 5.3 pounds, 25 inches in length, and 2.25 inches in diameter, this dynamo missile, named Spike, demonstrated its ability to find and hit such targets as small boats, helicopters, bunkers, machine gun nests, plus small armored vehicles with minimal collateral damage to the surrounding environment.
Source and more info: ridgecrestca
Pyramid Vision, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sarnoff Corporation, today unveiled the second generation of its TerraSight(TM) product suite, a cutting-edge, real-time video exploitation software package designed specifically to meet the demands of our armed forces in the field.
For military planners and troops in combat, TerraSight(TM) is the only solution that provides real-time situational awareness of up to eight Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) video streams overlaid on 3-D terrain. TerraSight(TM) helps correct UAV system inaccuracies, which in turn can then be linked to targeting systems. With more than 50 patents covering its core technology, TerraSight(TM) v1.1 provides increased operator capability and enhanced analysis aids.
“The increase in tactical UAV use over the past few years has produced huge amounts of data creating a need to effectively process and provide real-time information for the war fighter,” said John Bradburn, director for Business Development at Sarnoff Corporation. “Future Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) require a common software operating platform that can be used in multiple types of UAVs across all military service branches. TerraSight exceeds these compatibility requirements, interfacing with most common UAV platforms, including aerostat surveillance air ships and other fixed-camera configurations.”
Source and more info: shephard
Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) today opened its Unmanned Systems Center production facility in Moss Point, Miss., where the MQ-8B Fire Scout, and portions of the RQ-4B Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will be produced.
The facility signifies Northrop Grumman’s continued commitment to the Gulf Coast region, and marks southern Mississippi’s entry into the aerospace manufacturing industry. Ground breaking on the $13 million, 101,000 square foot facility took place April 13, 2004.
“The Unmanned Systems Center illustrates the company’s commitment to our U.S. Air Force, Navy and Army customers by providing a dedicated unmanned systems production facility in a cost-effective location,” said Ronald D. Sugar, Northrop Grumman’s chairman, chief executive officer and president. “This also offers our Unmanned Systems business the flexibility to expand operations, as the demand for these systems increases over time.”
The Unmanned Systems Center’s current workforce consists of 24 employees, which will grow to 60 by the end of 2006. The facility is designed to accommodate 250 employees, which may occur if production demands continue to rise.
“This facility has certainly been a cooperative Northrop Grumman and Jackson County Economic Development Foundation effort from the very beginning,” said Don Gaw, Northrop Grumman’s Unmanned Systems Center site manager. “We simply could not have completed this facility so quickly without the support of the entire community.”
Northrop Grumman is the largest industrial manufacturing employer in the region, with a workforce exceeding 18,000 employees. Five of the corporation’s eight business sectors are represented in the Gulf Coast region.
Source and more info: shephard
