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17 Aug 16. iGov wins contract to provide TACP-MCS for US AFLCMC. iGov has received a tactical air control party mobile communications system (TACP-MCS) delivery order from the US Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC). Valued at around $52m, the order requires the company to modify high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles (HMMWVs) for tactical air control party users. Work under the contract includes outfitting HMMWVs with software and systems for critical voice, data, and video communications. It will be carried out at iGov’s facility in Tampa, Florida, with planned completion in January 2021. Using mobile communications system, joint terminal attack controllers (JTACs) will be able to control close air support (CAS) aircraft from the safety of an armoured vehicle while coordinating and conducting joint CAS missions.
iGov business development vice-president Chuck Reiche said: “The Air Force Battle Management Directorate made it pretty clear that they desired a mature solution.
“We reviewed and worked with several large OEMs to ensure our ability to leverage the right products to meet the government’s technical and business requirements.
“Our partnership with Harris Communication Systems was a critical element, as their radio and intercom products were absolutely the right components.”
Personnel at AFLCMC are responsible for total life cycle management of Air Force weapon systems.
iGov has been supporting tactical C4 Systems for SOCOM and the Marine Corps in the US since 2004. (Source: airforce-technology.com)
17 Aug 16. Live Maps for Unmanned Air Systems in UK. Createc has been funded by the UK Centre for Defence Enterprise (CDE) to work on a software solution that can be easily incorporated into existing unmanned air systems (UAS) using only on-board passive sensors and a previous map. The Live Maps: Air project aimed to demonstrate how a small UAS could navigate without global positioning system (GPS) while simultaneously validating and updating untrusted maps. This could add a new capability to the current generation of in-service small UAS. Createc’s algorithms have been tested and developed using the BlackStart platform developed by Blue Bear Systems Research and the Black Hornet developed by Prox Dynamics and flown by Blue Bear.
The location drift compared to GPS using just the flexible-map algorithm has been demonstrated to be around 10-20%. With the Live Maps: Air algorithms used to correct the trajectory, these error rates reduce to around 1-5%. Because the errors are corrected by reference to a static map, errors don’t increase continuously over time; when distinctive locations are overflown most error that has been accumulated to that point is eliminated.
Beyond this project there are further areas of development which could result in minimal integration costs for existing small UAS platforms to enable them to fly in GPS denied environments.
Dr Matthew Mellor, Managing Director, Createc says:
The CDE funding has enabled Createc to develop technologies for MOD and access a market traditionally very difficult for an SME to enter. In addition this project has enabled Createc to build a good relationship with an established supplier to MOD.Createc is a Research and Development consultancy founded in 2010, based in Cockermouth, Cumbria. Createc has 11 employees working on imaging and sensing projects primarily for the civil nuclear and defence markets. (Source: UAS VISION)
17 Aug 16. Record-breaking Airlander 10 Makes Historic First Flight. Airlander 10 has successfully completed its first flight. All objectives of the planned flight were accomplished and the aircraft is now safely back at its masting site. Airlander 10 took off from the historic Cardington Airfield in Bedfordshire, England at approximately 19:45 on Wednesday 17th of August, after a short flig