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16 May 19. Yunzhou Tech unveils L80 USV development. China’s Yunzhou Intelligence Technology (Yunzhou Tech), a Zhuhai-based company specialising in the design and manufacture of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), has debuted a new armed USV development at the IMDEX 2019 maritime and defence exhibition held in Singapore from 14 to 16 May. The L80 USV is specifically designed for inland waterway operations and adopts a narrow aspect wave-piercing trimaran hullform measuring 12.12 long, 3.8m wide, and 1.62m tall, which makes the design the company’s largest yet. The USV’s hull is constructed from fibre-reinforced plastic that has been optimised to suppress wake generation, while its average draft of 0.45m when fully loaded enables it to dock and manoeuvre close to riverbanks. (Source: IHS Jane’s)
14 May 19. The USMC is working on an advanced reconnaissance drone that will be launched out the back of the MV-22 Osprey. For years, the Corps has sought ways to upgrade the capabilities of its tilt-rotor MV-22 Osprey, as the lightly armed aircraft is a big target and is vulnerable to attack, especially when landing and extracting ground forces.
Now, the Corps is looking at a drone that can be launched out of the back of an MV-22 Osprey to provide advanced reconnaissance of potential enemy threats to the aircraft, according officials at the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab.
It’s called the Air-Launched Fast Autonomous Reconnaissance System, or AFARS, and according to details provided by the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab. The air-launched drone has a maximum range of 165 nautical miles and a 100 nautical mile range with a 10 minute loiter time on station.
According to the Warfighting Lab, the AFARS system can maintain a line-of-sight data link capability within a 50 nautical mile radius, providing pilots potentially lifesaving intelligence of ground based threats miles before the crew reaches their target destination.
during an exercise at Camp Beuhring, Kuwait. (Sgt. Aaron Henson/Marine Corps)
The 6-foot-long drone can fly at an altitude of 25,000 feet and carry a payload of up to 4.4 pounds, potentially providing other kinetic strike capabilities or sensors. It’s the latest effort by the Corps to bridge some key vulnerabilities of the MV-22. The Corps was seeking to up-gun its tilt-rotor by creating a gunship variant that could provide escort capability. Forward-firing rockets were being considered.
But, according to Naval Air Systems Command, the Corps abandoned its search for a new weapon systems in favor of upgrading the underbelly GAU-17, 7.62 mm mini-gun known as the Defensive Weapon System.
Previous testing of the Defense Weapon System in 2015 highlighted some fields of fire limitations as a result of damage found on the fuselage of several test aircraft.
While the Corps’ Osprey has an escort gap, the Marine Corps at times has partnered with Air Force A-10 Warthogs to address the issue.
Lt. Colin B. Kennard, a spokesman for Marine Aircraft Group 24, previously told Marine Corps Times that the A-10 is the “preferred escort platform” and that the aircraft is “commonly paired” with the Osprey when conducting evacuations and extractions.
The A-10 has escorted the Corps’ Ospreys in support of anti-ISIS missions in Iraq and Syria, Kennard said.
The Corps also is amid plans to develop a large group five sea drone known as the MUX. It doesn’t expect to field the futuristic drone until around fiscal year 2026.
The program is still in the early stages of development, and the fiscal year 2020 budget request is only seeking $21.6m, according to Marine spokesman Capt. Christopher Harrison.
That money will go toward “technical concept maturation and experimentation for MUX,” Harrison said.
In May, Naval Air Systems Command posted two payload prize challenges on the government’s business opportunities website for potential MUX industry competitors.
The two challenges will award prizes to the winners for various designs of an airborne early warning payload and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance payloads for the MUX.
Winners of the two challenges could be awarded $700,000 for the winner, $200,000 for second place and $100,000 for third, according to the posting.
The AFARS system can’t plug the Osprey escort gap, but it can provide detailed information of threats ahead, reducing some of the aircraft’s risk. (Source: Defense News Early Bird/Military Times)
14 May 19. L3’s Iver4 UUV demos long-endurance capability. L3 Technologies’ Iver4 UUV has completed a long endurance mission lasting more than 14 hours in San Diego Bay, California, the company announced on 6 May. During the transit route of over 35 nautical miles, the Iver4 UUV collected high-quality side scan sonar and bathymetry data including more than ten nautical miles of the dedicated survey.
The mission was completed with a standard nickel-metal hydride battery configuration, demonstrating the battery’s power endurance and the system efficiency of the Iver4 platform.
The Iver4 man-portable UUV, with its standard NiMH battery configuration, can operate upwards of 20 hours dependent on payload and employment. Alternate battery chemistries are available as enhancement options, including lithium-ion, which supports run times greater than 40 hours.
The UUV’s extended endurance can support a wide range of operations, including mine countermeasures, anti-submarine warfare, extended survey and ISR. (Source: Shephard)
13 May 19. Turkish company reveals plans to develop a supersonic drone. Turkey’s state-controlled aerospace powerhouse, Turkish Aerospace Industries, plans to develop the country’s first supersonic drone, company executives said.
TAI showcased its “Aksungur” drone (“gyrfalcon” in English) earlier this month at the International Defence Industry Fair in Istanbul. The Aksungur is a new drone that can reportedly reach a maximum speed of 180 kph.
According to Temel Kotil, TAI’s chief executive official, the Goksungur (“peregrine falcon” in English) will be a supersonic version of the Aksungur. The Goksungur is set to have a maximum speed of 380 kph.
Kotil said TAI developed the Aksungur, a twin-engine-powered aircraft, in 18 months. The Aksungur has a maximum payload of 750 kilograms.
He said TAI manufactured two Aksungur drones for test flights and will deliver them this year to the Turkish Armed Forces. After completing the Aksungur program, TAI engineers will set out to work on the Goksungur program.
TAI designed, developed and built the medium-altitude, long-endurance Anka, Turkey’s first indigenous UAV. It also developed the Anka-S, a satellite-controlled version. TAI manufactures aviation components for Airbus, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, with annual exports worth $500m. It is a partner in the U.S.-led, multinational Joint Strike Fighter program that builds the F-35 fighter jet.
The Turkish company also produces the T129, a helicopter gunship, under license from the Italian-British company AgustaWestland. TAI expects a 2019 turnover of $2.6bn. (Source: UAS VISION)
14 May 19. Autopilot Software Allows UAVs to Soar on Thermals. A Navy scientist has re-engineered the software that allows long-endurance drones to powerlessly climb into the sky on bubbles of warm air. In a U.S. patent application published on May 2, Aaron Kahn, an engineer working on the Autonomous Locator of Thermals (ALOFT) project at the Naval Research Laboratory, reported that he has extensively tested the new software that detects and estimates the position of thermals, i.e., rising columns of warm air that birds use to stay aloft without flapping their wings.
Unlike birds, soaring drones need the benefits of thermal detection and position estimation software as the warm air tends to drift relative to the ground due to winds.
Prior systems relied on batch estimation processes that “require storing large arrays of data, which is not ideal for operation on small micro-controllers with limited memory resources.”
Kahn’s new soaring software uses extended Kalman filtering, a kind of algorithm already used by the Navy for navigating submarines and cruise missiles. Now it can help orbit drones like the tiny CICADA glider or long-endurance solar-soaring UAVs that might also have photovoltaic or fuel cells feeding battery-powered propellers.
Solar-soaring UAVs don’t need large batteries because they harvest energy from the environment using intelligent software, in the case of the autonomous soaring algorithms, or lightweight, integrated solar panels that capture energy from the sun.
“This technique enables an increase in range and endurance of an aircraft without having to add additional fuel/batteries,” according to the Navy’s patent application. “It is possible that the technique could be implemented in an aircraft without requiring any changes to its hardware, only software. Furthermore, the technique is applicable to both manned and unmanned aircraft. Because the method is parameterized, it can be quickly tailored to a variety of aircraft types.”
Now that the patent application has been published, qualified businesses can evaluate the technology with the intention of licensing it for use in their drones.
Brian Metzger, a senior technology manager at TechLink, guides businesses through Navy tech evaluation and licensing at no charge.
He said there’s a handful of promising solar-soaring UAV companies that will want to evaluate Kahn’s work, but also manned aircraft and glider manufacturers.
“This is really for anyone building air vehicles that can harness thermals,” Metzger said. (Source: UAS VISION/Phys.Org)
14 May 19. NMSU Student Project Improves UAV Flight Time. A research project in the College of Engineering at New Mexico State University is focused on increasing the endurance of UAS, or unmanned aerial systems.
Through a combination of solar power and the utilization of atmospheric updrafts called thermals, a UAS could fly for several hours as opposed to the 30-minute flight time that a battery-powered aircraft offers.
Jesus Rosales, a mechanical engineering Ph.D. student, who is leading the project in the computational fluid dynamics lab explained how the aircraft will operate.
“The plane will climb using thermals, like soaring birds such as hawks or pilot-controlled sailplanes. While doing so it will recharge its battery by employing the sun’s energy. Then it will use the stored energy for electric propulsion to look for the next thermal,” he said.
Currently, the research team is working on improving the prototype aircraft and developing algorithms that emulate the skills of sailplane pilots. Rosales first began working on the project when he was a master’s student in fall 2016.
“The project was partially motivated by research at the Jornada Experimental Range about the use of UAVs for agricultural monitoring,” said Andreas Gross, mechanical engineering assistant professor and head of the computational fluid dynamics lab.
The journal article, “Unmanned aerial vehicle-based remote sensing for rangeland assessment, monitoring, and management,” published in 2009 by Albert Rango et al. in the “Journal of Applied Remote Sensing” has been a useful resource for the research team.
Advantages of using solar-powered UAS to monitor rangeland and forests include reduced costs compared to full-size airplanes and increased image quality because of the lower flight altitude. While occasional site visits by experts will still be needed, solar-powered UAS could take over the routine rangeland monitoring of plant growth, an important factor for livestock grazing, as well as routine forest moisture content measurements, which has implications for fire danger, according to Gross.
“Jornada showed us a multi-spectral camera,” Gross said. “Our airplane was designed around that camera. The flight characteristics of the aircraft were demonstrated successfully. We are currently working on improving the electrical system and developing flight control algorithms.” (Source: UAS VISION/ Las Cruces Sun News)
13 May 19. OceanAlpha launches Dolphin 1 USRV. OceanAlpha has launched a battery powered and remotely navigated unmanned surface rescue vehicle (USRV) called Dolphin 1, the company announced on 8 May.
Dolphin 1 is a smart, buoyant, unmanned life-saving device designed to support water rescuers, marinas and offshore oil and gas platforms. The USRV can be operated in all types of water environments and can be used to augment or replace personal flotation devices and other water vehicles such as jet skis or small craft during water SAR operations.
The Dolphin has a range of 500m and can travel at a speed of almost 10 miles/hour to reach a person in distress. The high penetration fog lights located near the front top of the Dolphin 1 provide increased visibility in fog and at night. (Source: Shephard)
14 May 19. On Point: Growing roles and applications for UAVs in the ADF. Unmanned aerial systems are revolutionising the ADF, from combat mission support to intelligence and humanitarian roles, and yet it is still early days when the full scope of possibilities for their capabilities are considered.
Australia has clearly signalled its intentions of advancing its UAS capabilities, with Boeing’s “Loyal Wingman” program, General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper Variant, and Northrop Grumman’s MQ-4C Triton planned acquisitions set to push the ADF to new heights.
However, the capabilities of smaller UAS variants is also becoming more and more realised every day.
In this edition of On Point, Defence Connect spoke with engineer, project manager and solution integrator at Mirragin Aerospace Consulting, Rob Sutton, to discuss Australia’s role as a leader in the growing drone sector and its place in defence industry.
How are these UAVs going to shape the way in which we fight?
Imagine a section of Australian soldiers, they’re moving to an objective, and as they move to the objective, they come across an area that’s been identified in their intelligence reports as a possible choke point.
They stop, they pull out a drone, they put the drone in the air and they go and have a look at what’s at that area. They discovered that there’s a troop of tanks there, and so the section commander calls in a fire mission and they neutralise that threat. So, it’s just a simple application, but you can see how powerful that technology is in helping keep our people safe.
There’s many other applications. You could think of, for instance, drones being used as communications relay payloads, they could be used as logistic drones, so moving supplies around the battlefield, they could have electronic warfare packages on them.
Basically anything that you could think of, you can put on a drone. Across Navy and Air Force, there’s applications as well. For instance, maritime surveillance, inspecting masts, inspecting the top of a C17, looking after boarding parties, all that kind of stuff.
Then even more widely across emergency services, so police might be using drones for crime scene forensics and might be using them to find missing persons. Fire might be using them as situational awareness for a major bushfire or a major disaster, and even maybe using them as an aerial firefighting capability.
So, a huge range of different applications. What we do at Mirragin is firstly we help organisations identify opportunities to use drones within their organisation to help keep their people safe. Then once we’ve identified those applications, we work with them to successfully implement each of those drone projects.
Is it the safety component, the tactical advantage component that you get through using drones, which is guiding the development of it and engagement of that within Army?
It’s one of many. I think there’s obviously the recognition that if you can put a robot, because that’s effectively what a drone is, if you can put a robot in harms way and keep a person out of harms way, then that’s a real advantage.
War fighting is only becoming more lethal and more difficult and more complex, and so if you can use unmanned systems to keep people out of harms way, that’s a real benefit. But they also bring a whole range of other benefits.
One of the big things with a drone is it’s a bit like a multi tool. You can put different payloads on it. Every payload can do a different role. The number of roles that you can get drones to do is basically only limited by your imagination. All you need to do is develop a payload to do that role.
If you want to fly a mission to help evacuate people from an island after a disaster, put a loud speaker on it, or you put a mobile phone signal on it and fly over and you get text messages when the mobile towers have gone down. Basically anything that you can think of, any application you can think of, you can use drones for that.
If you were going to give the state of play of drones in Australia right now, in May, how would you explain that?
Growing.
We put out an Australian drone ecosystem map. We published that across our social media platforms. We’re changing it every quarter and we’re adding more and more people every quarter, because companies are coming up with amazing things.
I think even Defence Connect put out an article this morning about Titomic making a titanium UAV. They’ll be going on the list. They’re clearly game changers in the industry. There are people coming on all of the time. It’s growing, it’s an emerging industry, and it’s an exciting one to be a part of. You can listen to the full podcast with Rob Sutton, engineer, project manager and solution integrator at Mirragin Aerospace Consulting, here. (Source: Defence Connect)
10 May 19. Will the Russian Army buy hydrogen fuel cell drones? A drone is only as useful as its power supply. Internal combustion engines are powerful but loud. Batteries can only sustain short flights, and are drained even faster if the drone has to carry any additional payload.
But on May 6, a Russian firm announced it was bringing a Gjis UAV, a drone powered by hydrogen fuel cells, to the massive Army-2019 exposition in June. Though not without risk, if the fuel cell drone works at promise it could pack a surprising amount of capability into its small frame.
Made by International Aero Navigation Systems Concern, the Gjis drone boasts an altitude ceiling of at least 9,800 feet, a 3 mile operational radius, and a cruising speed of over 35 mph.
“The advantage in using hydrogen-powered UAV is that it can operate without additional logistics or fuel infrastructure — the users simply pour water into fuel cartridge, and the resulting reaction releases hydrogen that can power this UAV for several hours,” said Samuel Bendett, an adviser at the Center for Naval Analyses. “Given its range, this could be a close/support UAV.”
The phrase “without additional logistics” does not mean without additional risk. The design uses a metal hydride cartridge in the fuel cell. If that cartridge uses sodium borohydride with impurities, during hydrolysis it can off-gas borohydride-dibrone, which is a skin irritant. Dibrone by itself is both toxic when inhaled and also highly flammable.
That would be a lot of risk for increased range alone, but the drone doesn’t just provide longer range. The fuel cell on the drone offers 3 hours of flight time, about six to nine times as long a flight duration as could be achieved by batteries instead. It can also carry 22 pounds of payload as a baseline, and could carry more with additional fuel cells. For comparison, the standard hobbyist quadcopter can carry about 1 pound of payload.
“There have been reports that Russians may have tested hydrogen-powered UAVs in Syria,” said Bendett, a fellow in Russian studies at the Amrican Foreign Policy Council. “The Ministry of Defence is looking at a range of power options for its unmanned fleet – from diesel to electric to diesel-electric to now hydrogen-powered systems. These choices were informed by the Syrian experience, and the designer of Gjis is clearly hoping to get Ministry attention.”
Besides military interest, the hydrogen fuel cell drone may be marketed to the Interior Ministry or National Guard or any of Russia’s security agencies and departments interested in getting an ISR drone.
The risks with the fuel cell are real, though it’s easy to see the hazards spun as an advantage. A drone that catches fire when it crashes is a drone that might make opposing forces think twice about bringing it in with a net. (Source: C4ISR & Networks)
10 May 19. US GAO says MQ-4C Triton UAV development cost grows. Key Points:
- A US congressional watchdog said Triton UAV development has grown by 2% from last year
- Wing development has been challenging due to the difficult maritime environment in which the aircraft will fly
Development costs for the US Navy’s (USN’s) MQ-4C Triton unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) grew 2% from fiscal year 2018 (FY 2018) and are now predicted to cost 61% more than originally estimated in 2009, according Congress’ watchdog.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in its most recent annual weapon system assessment, released 9 May, that the latest development cost estimate for the Triton, in FY 2019 dollars, is USD5.67bn. The original cost estimate, also in FY 2019 dollars, from 2009 was USD3.5bn. In comparison, the FY 2018 GAO weapon system assessment said development costs were up 59% compared with the original cost estimate.
Triton will be a high-altitude long-endurance (HALE) surveillance aircraft based on the design of the US Air Force’s (USAF’s) RQ-4B Global Hawk UAV. It will be operated from five land-based sites and provide the navy with persistent maritime intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) data collection and dissemination capability, according to the GAO.
The GAO said issues with wing production posed continued risk to the Triton’s production schedule, quality, and cost. For example, programme officials told the GAO that the contractor reduced defects by 68% between the wings manufactured for the last system development test article, the sixth aircraft to be produced, and those manufactured for the 10th aircraft. Triumph Aerostructures is developing the wings. Northrop Grumman is working under a cost-plus contract for Triton development. (Source: IHS Jane’s)
10 May 19. Boeing’s Cargo Air Vehicle – First Outdoor Flight. Boeing has successfully completed the first outdoor flight tests of the cargo air vehicle (CAV). In a safe and controlled environment, the electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) successfully took off, hovered, transitioned to forward flight and then landed safely. Powered by an electric propulsion system, the CAV is designed to carry a payload up to 500 pounds (227 kilograms). This opens up new possibilities for safely and efficiently transporting goods in a variety of industries.
Since it was unveiled in 2018, the CAV has evolved from an initial concept to a prototype air vehicle. A team of Boeing researchers and engineers refined the design through rigorous indoor testing, flight simulations and lab research. The vehicle now features six dual-rotor systems and 12 propellers. It measures 17.5 feet long (5.33 meters), 20 feet wide (6.1 meters) and 5 feet tall (1.52 meters), and weighs 1,100 pounds (498.95 kilograms).Boeing NeXt is leading the responsible introduction of future air vehicles and the new mobility ecosystem that will enable operations in urban, regional and global markets. In addition to the CAV, the Boeing NeXt portfolio includes the passenger air vehicle.
In the coming months, Boeing will continue to advance the development of the CAV with flight testing focused on forward flight, loads analysis and vehicle performance. (Source: UAS VISION)
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