Sponsored by The British Robotics Seed Fund
http: www.britbots.com/fund
————————————————————————
18 Aug 21. Skyborg Vanguard Takes Next Steps Toward Program of Record. The US Fighters and Advanced Aircraft program executive office recently awarded contract options valued up to $13.2m to KRATOS (XQ-58A) and up to $7m to General Atomics (MQ-20) to further the development of the Skyborg Vanguard. These efforts will advance the integration of the Autonomous Core System (ACS) along with continued operational experimentation thru fiscal year 2022. The vehicles will demonstrate future warfighting capabilities through the teaming of manned and unmanned platforms at large force test events. The test events will provide critical information and the necessary insight needed to shape a future program.
Brig. Gen. Dale White PEO for Fighters and Advanced Aircraft stated, “These contract actions, while tactical in nature, are strategically important to this Vanguard as we continue to discover and learn how we will employ this advance technology in the fight. The team has always been committed to transitioning Skyborg to a program of record, and we’ll be ready in 2023 as the Air Force prepares its FY23 President’s Budget submission early next year.”
The next operational exercise is slated to occur in the Fall of 2021.
Skyborg is an autonomy-focused capability developed to enable the Air Force to operate and sustain low-cost, teamed aircraft that can thwart adversaries with quick, decisive actions in contested environments. The program aims to enable airborne combat mass by building a transferable autonomy foundation for a family of layered, unmanned air vehicles. As designed, this foundation will deliver unmatched combat capability per dollar by lowering the barriers to entry for industry and allowing continuous hardware and software innovation in acquisition, fielding and sustainment of critical mission systems. During this effort, AFRL will prototype a suite of autonomy and unmanned system technologies equipped with capabilities that can support a range of Air Force missions.
To fast track this game-changing capability, the U.S. Air Force designated Skyborg as one of three Vanguard programs in 2019. These priority initiatives integrate several technology components across multiple domains to create complex, multidisciplinary solutions. Marked by an enterprise-wide commitment, Vanguards deliver advanced capabilities that transform future operations with cutting-edge technologies. As autonomy technology matures, Skyborg will bring cutting-edge capabilities to the fight at a faster pace and lower cost. Steve Fendley, Kratos Unmanned Systems Division President, said,
“The Kratos approach to developing and delivering attritable unmanned jet aircraft directly aligns with the USAF objectives from digital engineering development to affordable mass to distributed lethality. The Kratos Valkyrie was ready for its first flight of the full-scale aircraft system (note we rarely experiment with subscale prototypes because for integrated aircraft systems, scalability is not linear and therefore results in additional cost and schedule) in under 30 months from initial concept. Our approach is a tailored version of digital engineering/digital development specifically designed to support rapid and affordable physical system development. The process consists of a cyclical succession of digital design and digital analysis combined with rapid prototyping of high-risk elements, supported with both conventional and company-developed life-cycle digital toolsets. The XQ-58A Valkyrie exemplifies both the approach and result; a true attritable (cost, operational methods, and performance) unmanned jet aircraft system uniquely applicable to the Skyborg Vanguard requirements. The Skyborg program requirements are for, ‘autonomous, low-cost platforms to enable expeditionary operations that can generate massed combat power with minimal logistical footprints. Our demonstrated success in developing affordable unmanned jet aircraft systems includes over 10 different aircraft types for a range of tactical and target applications. For the Valkyrie and its multiple program opportunities, we leaned forward with internal funds and established an initial production run of 12 aircraft systems. These aircraft are coming off the line this year and next. Our unique position as a mid-tier system provider enables us to take these more commercial (versus conventional defense primes) approaches which benefit the DoD and demonstrate the speed that is achievable through leveraging the Silicon Valley approach to technology and system development.” Eric DeMarco, Kratos President and CEO, said,
“Kratos remains committed to supporting our partner’s, the United States Air Force, objective of transitioning Skyborg to a Program of Record in 2023 with the XQ-58 Valkyrie. Primary stated requirements for Skyborg Program Drones include runway independence, affordability, and that the actual to be fielded aircraft exists today, are not surrogates and will execute flights under the program this year, not at some future date. Kratos is currently satisfying the complete requirement set. We believe that Kratos’ demonstrated and proven ability to rapidly develop, demonstrate, and manufacture large quantities of high-performance jet drones at an affordable cost is consistent with our customer’s stated vision, and our entire organization is focused on successfully executing the mission.” (Source: UAS VISION/ Air Force Life Cycle Management Center; Press Release)
16 Aug 21. General Dynamics opens new unmanned underwater vehicle manufacturing center. The company formally opened the UUV center of excellence in an Aug. 13 ceremony at its Taunton manufacturing site, which since 1987 has built systems for the U.S. Army and other customers. The Knifefish UUV was previously built at the company’s facility in Quincy, Mass., but the work has outgrown the facility as General Dynamics juggles building the Knifefish, engineering and backfitting improvements and building smaller UUVs in the Bluefin family of systems for customers like the Royal Australian Navy.
Carlo Zaffanella, vice president and general manager of the GDMS Maritime and Strategic Systems business, said at a short ribbon-cutting ceremony this move is the latest in about $30m in investments the company has made in UUV design and manufacturing.
“Frankly, we’re going to continue that. We strongly believe that the era of maritime autonomy is very much upon us. The ability to make systems that are unmanned, that can do things that manned vessels cannot, can take sailors out of harm’s way — that era is here, and the technologies needed to do that, whether they be the engineering inside or the absolutely first-grade manufacturing that is done at a facility like this — all of that now exists,” he told the manufacturing center’s employees along with company leaders and Navy Knifefish program officials.
In 2019, General Dynamics was awarded a low-rate initial production contract for Knifefish, which is based on the 21-inch diameter version of the Bluefin Robotics UUV. The company is working its way through building five systems, with each system including two UUVs, launch and recovery equipment, command-and-control gear and more. These systems are being built to the Baseline 0 design, but improvements for a Baseline 1 upgrade are already in the works and will be backfit onto the initial UUVs before they’re delivered to the Navy for operational testing as part of the Littoral Combat Ship mine countermeasures mission package.
The LCS MCM package includes three airborne and three in-water systems that will combine to search for and destroy mines buried under the seafloor, in the water and in the surf zone. Knifefish provides a buried mine-hunting capability, with sophisticated sensors that can look at all the clutter on the ocean floor — natural things like rocks and reefs as well as junk as large as refrigerators — and determine what is likely to be a mine. Sailors can then send in other tools to a likely mine, verify what it is and figure out the best way to neutralize it.
The upgrade to Block 1, for which the Navy awarded a $73m contract in June, will “enhance Knifefish operations at deeper depths, identify more complex target environments and provide more precise localization,” according to a company release.
With the opening of the new UUV facility, the employees at Taunton who specialize in manufacturing and final assembly will bring their training and expertise to this Navy program, while the nearby Quincy facility will continue the UUV engineering, as well as building some subcomponents of the Knifefish and conducting final in-water testing before delivering the vehicles to the Navy.
Zaffanella told reporters after the ceremony the technology will continue to improve. Even as General Dynamics is building the initial units and backfitting them to the Block 1 configuration, the company is also working on other improvements for UUVs overall, whether it be the Knifefish, the related Bluefin-21 commercial variant, or the smaller Bluefin-12 and Bluefin-9 UUVs.
He said the launch and recovery process from an LCS or other ship has become relatively straightforward. The next step is finding ways to make UUVs operationally more useful. A top focus here, he said, is the ability to analyze data while the UUV is still in the water, for something closer to real-time threat identification.
“Clearly, you would like to get to where more of that analysis were possible in real time, or at least as close to real time as you can make it,” Zaffanella told reporters. “If we could get the devices to provide not just essentially a map of what’s out there but perhaps detects or even tracks and say, ‘This is really what you want to be concerned about in real time,’ then the operational utility will go up.”
“That is sort of in my mind one of the necessary evolutions in the next, I’d say five years,” he continued. “Right now, we have to produce these reliably, get them into the Navy’s hands, get them to the operators so that the sailors can use them. But I think that’s a natural evolution.”
Zaffanella added that increased endurance and better batteries will also be points of focus.
General Dynamics bought Bluefin Robotics in 2016 after partnering with the company to use its Bluefin-21 as the base for Knifefish. Knifefish refers to the specific configuration with the Navy’s sensors for mine countermeasures. Australia is also using the Bluefin-12 and Bluefin-9 for mine countermeasures, but Zaffanella said the UUV could do other things for military, government or commercial customers.
“It’s a large deployable capability with a payload section that you could fill, so that leaves a lot of opportunity,” he said, adding it can provide “tremendous surveillance capabilities.”
On the commercial side, he said, the UUV could detect natural resources or lost items at sea or conduct exploration or surveillance missions.
The Block 1 systems will go to the Navy next year for testing. LCS mission modules program manager Capt. Gus Weekes, in an Aug. 3 presentation at the Navy League’s annual Sea Air Space conference in Maryland, said the Block 0 configuration met the Navy’s original needs, but great power competition is pushing the Navy toward pursuing a more capable vehicle as part of the mission package. (Source: Defense News)
13 Aug 21. US Navy nears decisions on new small, medium underwater drones. The U.S. Navy is “well on its way” to delivering a replacement small unmanned underwater vehicle for mine countermeasures and is in source selection for a replacement medium UUV that will support both the submarine and the explosive ordnance disposal communities.
The Mk 18 Mod 1 Swordfish and Mk 18 Mod 2 Kingfish date back to the late 1990s and 2000s. The former is a 150-pound small UUV that could be carried in and out of the water by a couple sailors; the latter is a 600-pound medium UUV primarily launched and recovered from a rigid-hull inflatable boat. The pair can be used for mine countermeasures and ocean survey, and the popular expeditionary mine countermeasures company (ExMCM) was built around an unmanned systems platoon that uses both vehicles.
The medium-size Razorback UUV has a program history more than a decade long, with the Navy initially seeking a UUV that could sense the littoral battlespace. The UUV the Navy first bought under the Razorback name will be launched and recovered via the dry deck shelter on some submarines, though the Navy has since changed course and is seeking a follow-on version that would be launched and recovered from a submarine torpedo tube.
These older technologies are reaching their limits even while the Navy continues to develop new sensors, target-recognition software and more that they’d like to put to sea, said Capt. Dan Malatesta, the program manager for expeditionary missions within the Program Executive Office for Unmanned and Small Combatants. The Lionfish small UUV and the Viperfish medium UUV programs that will replace these three legacy programs are both making good progress and should be ready to replace their predecessors in the next two to three years.
Lionfish completed a second user operational evaluation with an ExMCM company in May, he said Aug. 3 at the Navy League’s annual Sea Air Space conference. Two existing vehicles — L3Harris Technologies′ Iver 4 and Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Remus 300 — are being considered for the program.
Lionfish would replace the Mk 18 Mod 1, which is based off the Remus 100 design from Huntington Ingalls. Malatesta said during his program update at the Naval Sea Systems Command booth the Mk 18 Mod 1 vehicle, which first saw use in Iraq in 2003, has “kind of maxed out its capability for computing power and those sort of things.” As a result, the Navy can’t integrate the newest sensors, autonomy packages and other updates onto the aging platform.
On the medium UUV side, the Razorback and the Mk 18 Mod 2 will merge into a single program called Viperfish. Malatesta said the Mk 18 Mod 2 and the Razorback are both based off the Remus 600 UUV design, so merging them into a single program won’t change the basics of how ExMCM companies or submarines handle and operate them. Viperfish is in source selection.
He said the Navy is working closely with the ExMCM operators to understand the upgrades they need for their current Mk 18 Mod 2s. These include better sonars and cameras for clearer pictures of potential threats in the water, automatic target recognition aides, autonomy software so the UUV can decide to circle back around to a potential item of interest and provide additional imagery for processing.
An EOD officer himself, Malatesta said being in the program office “has been very beneficial to have that tight loop [with EOD colleagues in operational units] to get those requirements. So we are working on all those things. Automatic target recognition, we’ve brought it to the topside, so after they recover the vehicle, but we’re looking to put that in the vehicle” for target recognition in-stride.
“All those things we’re doing for the Mod 2 — so whether that’s [automatic target recognition] or [artificial intelligence and machine learning] that we are starting to implement into the vehicle — the idea is to move those over to the Viperfish,” Malatesta added. “The Viperfish competition is really about the vehicle directly … and, as we continue to mature those [new capabilities] in the Mod 2, we’ll have that same capability in the Viperfish.”
According to a slide Malatesta showed, the first eight ExMCM companies are already outfitted with Mk 18 Mod 2 UUVs. As the community is in the midst of doubling the number of ExMCM companies in the fleet, the next four companies to stand up will get the Mk 18 Mod 2 as their initial UUV. The last four are expected to receive the Viperfish from the outset in the 2024 or 2025 timeframe.
Information about the Viperfish program in an online solicitation notes the first UUVs delivered will be in the MCM configuration and will be sent to the ExMCM companies, with the submarine community waiting a bit longer for their vehicles and the torpedo tube launch and recovery gear. (Source: Defense News)
12 Aug 21. Royal Navy tests new robot boat ‘Otter Pro’ for future operations. The next stage of the trials will see the survey boat being tested in a much more complex environment. The Royal Navy has tested a new robotic vessel, known as ‘Otter Pro’, at the Defence Diving School, on Horsea Island at Portsmouth naval base. The remote-controlled vessel was trialled by the navy’s Project Hecla team for future underwater survey operations. Using a wide range of sensors, the boat is designed to quickly collect data on the water and objects in and around it on the seabed. During these tests, Otter Pro was able to gather sonar imagery of several wrecks.
The survey performed by the boat gave detailed evidence of decay and structural collapse on a motorboat, helicopter, and sunken day cruiser.
In the first hour, the boat surveyed an area the size of a football pitch.
The project Hecla team surveyed the 7,000m² Horsea Lake in 40 minutes and then generated a viable product within 60 minutes.
Royal Navy trials lead commander Graham Mimpriss said: “Although the Otter Pro is being operated to enable Project Hecla to refine future operating concepts of uncrewed surface vehicles in future military surveying application, it has begun to prove itself as being superior to existing portable systems.
“Using a rapid response context, this vehicle was mobilised within an hour of arrival, having been transported to the site in a van.”
The next stage of the trials will see the Otter Pro being tested in a more confined environment. The tests will focus on refining the boat’s near-real time data processing.
The Project Hecla team will also further test the survey boat’s Norbit multi-beam echo sounder and other sonar systems. (Source: naval-technology.com)
————————————————————————-
The British Robotics Seed Fund is the first SEIS-qualifying investment fund specialising in UK-based robotics businesses. The focus of the fund is to deliver superior returns to investors by making targeted investments in a mixed basket of the most innovative and disruptive businesses that are exploiting the new generation of robotics technologies in defence and other sector applications.
Automation and robotisation are beginning to drive significant productivity improvements in the global economy heralding a new industrial revolution. The fund allows investors to benefit from this exciting opportunity, whilst also delivering the extremely attractive tax reliefs offered by the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS). For many private investors, the amount of specialist knowledge required to assess investments in robotics is not practical and hence investing through a fund structure makes good sense.
The fund appoints expert mentors to work with each investee company to further maximise the chance of success for investors. Further details are available on request.
www.britbots.com/fund
————————————————————————