29 Dec 15. Unmanned aircraft garner welcomed attention in omnibus package. On Friday, Dec. 18, the president signed into law a comprehensive appropriations package, called an omnibus, that allows for the federal government to function through fiscal year 2016. Programs related to the integration and use of unmanned aircraft systems across many departments and agencies benefited from this deal. Some highlights are included in Division L of the explanatory statement, which deals with appropriations for the Federal Aviation Administration. It states that the agreement includes $17.6m for unmanned aircraft systems research, an increase of $8m above the budget request. Within this increase, $3m is provided to help meet FAA’s UAS research goals of system safety and data gathering, aircraft certification, command and control link challenges, control station layouts and certification, sense and avoid, and environmental impacts; and $5m is provided for the Center of Excellence on unmanned aerial systems, for a total of $5.5m for the center. The statement says, “It is expected that UAS flight operations conducted as part of center of excellence research be performed at one or more of the six UAS test sites selected for UAS research and airspace integration.” Additionally among other UAS programs, the Department of Homeland Security’s Air and Marine program, project, and activity accounts were increased $4m for UAS ground control stations and power systems, $11m for replacement UAS, and $8m for UAS radars. This is outlined in Division F of the explanatory statement. (Source: AUVSI)
29 Dec 15. DARPA, Northrop Move to Develop VTOL Aircraft. The Convair XFY-1 Pogo of the 1950s is one of those famous aviation “ funnies” – a weird, experimental aircraft intended to take off and land vertically. The “tailsitter” aircraft might have been the prototype for a new class of fighter that could take off and land from almost any ship with a flat deck.
While there were many technical hurdles, there was one problem that never quite found a solution – while a pilot could strap in and take off straight up, his ability to make a vertical, over-the-shoulder landing was a whole lot harder. The project was dropped in 1956.
But the advent of unmanned aerial vehicles means only the machine, not the pilot, has to look backwards to land, and a new project is in development to field an aircraft that could fly from warships with a small flight deck.
Known as TERN, for Tactically Exploited Reconnaissance Node, the project is a joint program between the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the US Navy’s Office of Naval Research. Northrop Grumman was recently chosen to build a full-scale demonstrator system of the medium-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aerial system (UAS).
“The design we have in mind for the TERN demonstrator could greatly increase the effectiveness of any host ship by augmenting awareness, reach and connectivity,” Dan Prat, DARPA program manager, said in a Dec. 28 press release.
“We continue to make progress toward our goal to develop breakthrough technologies that would enable persistent ISR and strike capabilities almost anywhere in the world at a fraction of current deployment costs, time and effort,” he added.
Northrop beat out AeroVironment for the Phase 3 portion of the TERN program and was awarded a $93m contract on Dec. 24. Northrop reportedly will also contribute $39m to the effort.
The Northrop TERN model, first shown on Dec. 11, is a flying-wing tailsitter design with a four-point landing wheel configuration, powered by twin, counter-rotating propellers on its nose. The aircraft will take off and land vertically, transitioning to horizontal flight to carry out its mission.
DARPA, in its Dec. 28 release, acknowledged the TERN demonstrator will “bear some resemblance” to the XFY-1 Pogo.
“Moving to an unmanned platform, refocusing the mission and incorporating modern precision relative navigation and other techn