Defense Technology International - May 2008 - (Page 36)

SURVEILLANCE TACTICAL control system and energy-efficient propulsion, Lightener is capable of 3-hr. mission endurance, maintaining speeds of 15-45 kt., which improves loitering, and safe takeoff and landing even under strong winds. In fact, Lightener does not use an airbag or parachute for landing. ITL claims it can be retrieved through a controlled soft landing over any terrain. In the U.S., the backpack UAV business is dominated by AeroVironment. The company concentrates on three hand-launched UAVs: the big Puma, an updated vehicle in the same class as Pointer; the medium-sized Raven (4.2 The small UAV’s basic missions, AeroVironment argues, are force protection and force multiplication. “Binoculars in the sky” is what the company calls them, capable of extending the commander’s ﬁeld of view over the next hill, around the next block or through the next two bends in the road. As such, it gives a commander the initiative in the attack and advance warning of a threat. The company says the UAV is designed for reliability, rapid deployment and easy use. All of AeroVironment’s small UAVs use fixed cameras. Pan, tilt and zoom functions are digital, not mechanical. The driver for this is reliability and durability: “We want to ﬂy hundreds and hundreds of missions, in a difficult environment in terms of weather and landing zones,” the executive says. The Raven has no dedicated recovery system—it lands by stalling. The wings are designed to separate to better absorb impact energy. It’s not the sort of treatment that a three-axis gimbal would appreciate. The company has also devoted a good deal of attention to ease of operation—particularly since its users are “18-19-yearolds in a difficult, dangerous environment.” The basic ground-control system is designed along the lines of a video game controller, and in the latest versions of the Raven and Wasp, has been brought down to the scale of a hand-held device. Teaching operators to use the Raven effectively is an important task. AeroVironment provides training services to the U.S. Army and other customers with a cadre of company-employed instructors, many with Special Forces backgrounds. Some of the most successful students from the two-week training course are further schooled to be instructors. An Army news story in late 2007 proﬁled the Raven master trainer for the 173rd Airborne Brigade—a 22year-old corporal who had been a light vehicle mechanic. In use with Navy SEAL teams, Raven imagery has been used to support F/A18F strikes using the ﬁghter’s Raytheon U.S. AIR FORCE USAF Staff Sgt. Marie Garcia launches an RQ-11B Raven at Bagram AB, Afghanistan. lb.), and the 1-lb. Wasp, the smallest UAV in production. The Raven, a company official says, is basically a one-backpack system in weight and volume, including a charging system, spare batteries and control station. The Wasp, in service with the U.S. Air Force and Marines as the Battleﬁeld Air Targeting Micro Air Vehicle (Batmav), is “one-third of a Raven” in package size, “displacing less of everything else,” says an AeroVironment executive. The result is that the Batmav is deployed by the Marines down to the platoon level, whereas Raven is a battalion asset. This is a natural evolution for AeroVironment, which pushes a keepit-simple approach to UAV design. 36 Atﬂir targeting pod. The Raven initially acquired the target, and video from the UAV, based on its position and sight line, was used to ﬁx the location. Raven imagery was then embedded in a Joint Tactical Airstrike Request and transmitted to the ﬁghters. The Atﬂir could then be cued automatically onto the target, allowing the pilot to conﬁrm that the image was what the Raven was looking at. Atﬂir imagery was then downlinked to a Rover terminal, providing ﬁnal conﬁrmation for an attack. The Raven is the object of a product improvement program. One innovation under test is a digital data link, which would replace a four-channel analog link. It has two immediate advantages: increasing the number of available channels to 16 from four, and allowing one UAV to act transparently as the relay for another vehicle, providing a beyondline-of-sight capability that is useful in rugged or urban terrain. AeroVironment is exploring advanced technologies, too, ﬂying a Puma UAV last year with a Protonex fuel cell under a U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory contract. With a power system using a chemical hydride fuel, the UAV demonstrated ﬂight endurance of more than 7 hr., versus 2.5 hr. for the standard Puma. AeroVironment cautions, however, that these technologies are far from mature. “They are expensive and time is needed to productionize them,” the executive says. The Pentagon’s latest UAV road map cautions that current fuel cell materials have “thermal limitations” that could affect their use in hot climates. Another small UAV is entering largescale production. In January, the U.S. Navy announced that it was buying 185 Honeywell RQ-16A Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) systems, each with two vehicles, for delivery between June and November. Originally a product of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency/Army program, the MAV has moved quickly into service to support explosive ordnance disposal operations. In this case, the MAV’s beneﬁt is its ability to inspect a target—a suspicious vehicle, structure or disturbed earth—from close range, covering ground much more quickly than an unmanned ground vehicle and without putting people at risk. Work is still underway on developing a heavy-fuel engine for the MAV. Honeywell awarded a contract to Britain’s RCV engines last August to develop an improved version of its rotary-valve engine for the RQ-16. ■ —With Bill Sweetman in Minneapolis. AviationWeek.com/dti DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL MAY 2008 http://AviationWeek.com/dti

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Defense Technology International - May 2008 Contents Around the World Science Watch Tech Watch Learn and Live Think Again Vive la Difference En Route Out of the Box Package Deal On Watch Inside Job Programs Update The Net Back to the Future Busy Signal Mighty Mites Hull of an Idea Tough Enough Cutting Edge First Person In Review Insight

Defense Technology International - May 2008

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