15 Jun 10. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Insitu will jointly research the integration of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) into national airspace under a cooperative research development agreement. Insitu will provide a ScanEagle UAS, and related support hardware and data for the study. Insitu commercial business development vice-president Paul McDuffee said the FAA had a well-equipped laboratory and resources at the technical centre to allow it to fully evaluate Insitu’s tier II system.
“Through the CRDA, the FAA will have an opportunity to better understand UAS design, construction and functionality,” he said.
“It will also begin determining differences in how an air traffic controller manages an unmanned aircraft versus a manned aircraft by integrating the ScanEagle system with existing FAA air traffic control simulation capabilities.”
As part of the agreement, Insitu will also train FAA pilots and support staff to fly and maintain the system. (Source: airforcetechnology.com)
18 Jun 10. Alenia Aeronautica starts the Sky-Y Unmanned Aerial System fourth flight campaign. The Sky-Y, Alenia Aeronautica’s UAS (Unmanned Aerial System) technological demonstrator, has successfully accomplished – at the Italian Air Force’s air base in Decimomannu, Sardinia – its first flight with a Flight Control System wholly developed by Alenia Aeronautica in collaboration with Alenia SIA (Alenia Aeronautica’s owned company). During this test campaign Alenia Aeronautica will experiment the new E-FCS (Experimental-FCS), which is a prototype of a system including an avionic computer, several sensors (inertial, air data, GPS) and electrical actuators for the primary and secondary flight controls. The system complies with the recent aeronautical certification rules and with the most advanced technical and industrial directives for this kind of equipments, regarding both hardware and software. As a matter of fact, the control laws introducing the rationale for the remote and automated aircraft’s control have been developed entirely by Alenia Aeronautica. The Sky-Y aircraft is at its fourth flight-test campaign and it is envisaged it will complete its testing programme by the end of July 2010, with 15 long-endurance flights. This is the first flight campaign taking place at the Decimomannu air base in Sardinia, thanks to the precious collaboration with the Ministry of Defence and the Italian Air Force.
15 Jun 10. The French DGA has already completed three of the four flight trial phases involving the Schiebel CAMCOPTER® S-100 Unmanned VTOL
(Vertical Takeoff and Landing) Helicopter capability. In December 2009 Schiebel signed a contract with the French Direction DGA for the lease of its unrivalled and in production CAMCOPTER® S-100 Unmanned Aircraft
System (UAS) to assess the advantages of a VTOL UAS and has so far successfully accomplished three of the four experimental trials. Fitted with the Thales Optronics Agile 2 Electro Optical and Infra Red (EO/IR) sensor, the first trials took place in the military camp of Canjuers in the South of France. The second phase was carried out in Sissonne near Reims, again on a military range and included the participation in a French Army exercise. The S-100 supported the troops on the ground with great success and received specific acclaim. In the third phase the CAMCOPTER® S-100 was tested under very hot and dry conditions.
Jun 10. First World Wide Official Presentation of the SNIPER XL in UAV Navigation Alpha Unmanned System’s stand at EUROSATORY. Following its international expansion policy, UAV Navigation, was present for the first time in EUROSATORY. UAV Navigation is the Spanish leader in the design and manufacture of avionic equipment, and it was sharing the stand with its sister company Alpha Unmanned Systems, company specialized in the development of UAV’s. Alpha Unmanned Systems presented its new platform the SNIPER XL. With the support of UAV Navigation, Alpha Unmanned Systems