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Archive for the ‘UAS’ Category

GA-ASI Adds New Capabilities to its Predator Mission Trainer

Saturday, March 23rd, 2024

SAN DIEGO – 21 March 2024 – In a move that will be welcomed by many of its international customers, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) has installed enhanced operating software into its Predator Mission Trainer (PMT) simulator that resides at GA-ASI’s Flight Test & Training Center (FTTC) in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The new PMT Plus software was developed jointly by GA-ASI and CAE-USA allowing international flight crews to train on the latest version of Operational Flight Program (OFP) software and as well as the latest capabilities including Automatic Takeoff and Landing Capability (ATLC).

“With this upgrade, our international customers can now train on the latest version of OFP for their fleets of MQ-9A Remotely Piloted Aircraft,” said GA-ASI President David R. Alexander. “For our MQ-9A customers, the PMT Plus will be an exciting enhancement for them, enabling cutting-edge mission training. In addition, the new software will enable us to efficiently upgrade to future OFPs to meet our customers’ operational needs.”

In addition to its OFP and ATLC capabilities, PMT Plus improves the visual graphics for conducting operationally realistic Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) mission training, including the addition of maritime entities. The improved user interface at the Instructor Off-board Station (IOS) allows instructors to add elements into scenarios more rapidly, either during a lesson or immediately before a lesson, which saves time and enables a more student-centric learning experience.

“Collaboration is critical to delivering efficient mission training at the point of need,” said CAE Defense & Security Group President Dan Gelston. “Our longstanding relationship with GA-ASI enables agile development and rapid integration so customers not only gain enhanced training capabilities but also benefit from efficiencies like a smaller hardware suite, which adds additional value.”

The enhanced software also reduces the PMT’s footprint, enabling a reduction in electrical and Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) demand, while producing a quieter learning environment for students and instructors.

The PMT was purchased from CAE and has been a core component of GA-ASI’s customer training at the FTTC since 2020. The FTTC has been the centerpiece of GA-ASI’s customer training capability since its founding. In 2023, GA-ASI announced the opening of a new hangar at the FTTC specifically to support international crew training.

GA-ASI Tests Sonobuoy Dispensing System with MQ-9B SeaGuardian

Friday, March 22nd, 2024

SAN DIEGO – 20 March 2024 – On Feb. 27, 2024, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI), in cooperation with the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), conducted a series of tests on GA-ASI’s Sonobuoy Dispensing System (SDS) using the MQ-9B SeaGuardian® Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) on the U.S. Navy’s W-291 test range in southern California.

GA-ASI’s SeaGuardian flew the full test flight event configured with the SDS pod andSeaVue multi-role radar from Raytheon, an RTX business. During the test, the SDS pod dropped eight AN/SSQ-53 and two AN/SSQ-62 sonobuoys. Upon dispensing, the sonobuoys were successfully monitored by the SeaGuardian’s onboard Sonobuoy Monitoring and Control System (SMCS).

“This was a very successful demonstration of our SDS capability,” said GA-ASI President David R. Alexander. “The demonstration helped us prove out the SDS, which is an important component for our Anti-Submarine Warfare capability.”

The SeaGuardian was flown under a NAVAIR Interim Flight Clearance. The SDS pod is fitted with an advanced pneumatic ejection system developed, designed, and manufactured by AEREA in Italy. AEREA also supplies the internal structure assembly.

MQ-9B SeaGuardian is a medium-altitude, long-endurance RPA system. Its multi-domain capabilities allow it to flex from mission to mission. SeaGuardian has been used by the U.S. in several recent demonstrations, including Northern Edge, Integrated Battle Problem and Group Sail. The aircraft is currently being operated by the Japan Coast Guard (JCG) and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF).

DroneShield Awarded $4.3 Million U.S. Government Contract

Thursday, March 21st, 2024

• A repeat U.S. Government order of $4.3 million contract for its handheld C-UxS systems.

• Further material orders are anticipated from this customer.

DroneShield Ltd (ASX:DRO) (DroneShield or the Company) is pleased to announce it has received a repeat order of $4.3 million from a U.S. Government customer for a number of its handheld C-UAS systems.

The delivery is expected to be complete over the next 15 days, using available stock on hand.

DroneShield has been working with this customer for several years, with a number of smaller preceding orders. This is the first material contract from the customer, and subsequent material larger orders are expected in near term. The exact timing and quantum of future orders will be advised to market as further information becomes available.

“Widespread global conflict continues to provide clear evidence of the rapid evolution of unmanned systems.” Tom Branstetter, Director of Business Development stated, “This U.S. government end-user has and always will require cutting-edge capabilities to maintain its decisive advantage. This initial order is a testament to our team’s unwavering commitment to addressing complex challenges and further highlights our key position in the counter-unmanned systems space.”

Matt McCrann, DroneShield US CEO, commented: “DroneShield products have undergone extensive evaluations from a number of U.S. Government agencies in the last several years, and we’re honored by the customer relationship we have and pleased to start seeing the results of these efforts.” McCrann continued, “In addition to market leading product performance, the ability for us to rapidly deliver DroneShield solutions was important to the customer. We’re proud to be able to do so in support of their urgent operational requirements, as drone threats continue to rapidly escalate.”

GA-ASI Hosts Joint Industry/Government Open Architecture Conference

Friday, March 15th, 2024

February Conference Focused on Modular Open Systems Approach for UAS

SAN DIEGO – 13 March 2024 – General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) hosted an Open Architecture Symposium on Feb. 29, 2024, at its headquarters in Poway, California. At the symposium, government and industry speakers highlighted the tools, communities, and partners required to put Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) into practice in the development of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). More than 80 attendees from approximately 30 organizations attended the event, which featured addresses from the U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, Chief Digital & Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO), and industry speakers, as well as demonstrations of GA-ASI’s open architecture efforts.

“Open Architecture is key to GA-ASI systems,” said GA-ASI CEO Linden Blue, who spoke at the event. “The Department of Defense’s MOSA efforts are building products that are quicker to integrate and faster to iterate. This enables best-of-breed competition and forms the basis for delivering new capabilities, such as mission autonomy, across our platforms.”

The symposium highlighted a large cross-section of government and industry. GA-ASI appreciated the support and participation of guest speakers from more than a dozen companies. The conversation covered lessons learned from experienced integrators of Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) and Open Mission Systems (OMS) capabilities, highlighted the diversity of products aligned to MOSA technical standards, and spotlighted growing autonomous capabilities built on open foundations. The Symposium highlighted the rich ecosystem, challenges, and opportunities surrounding open architecture initiatives across the Department of Defense.

The new Gray Eagle 25M (GE 25M) brings MOSA to the Multi-Domain Operations (MDO)-capable system to ensure incremental enhancements can be made at the speed of emerging threats. Rapid integration of technology enables GE 25M to act as an information quarterback, receiving data from multiple reconnaissance assets, employing launched effects, and extending communications networks. GE 25M flew for the first time in Dec. 2023 and adheres to MOSA principles, leveraging modernized avionics, data links, sensor integration, and a laptop ground control station.

AFRL’s XQ-67A Makes 1st Successful Flight

Thursday, March 14th, 2024

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio (AFNS) —  

The Air Force Research Laboratory’s Aerospace Systems Directorate successfully flew the XQ-67A, an Off-Board Sensing Station, uncrewed air vehicle Feb. 28, at the General Atomics Gray Butte Flight Operations Facility near Palmdale, California.

The XQ-67A is the first of a second generation of autonomous collaborative platforms. Following the success of the XQ-58A Valkyrie, the first low-cost uncrewed air vehicle intended to provide the warfighter with credible and affordable mass, the XQ-67A proves the common chassis or “genus” approach to aircraft design, build and test, according to Doug Meador, autonomous collaborative platform capability lead with AFRL’s Aerospace Systems Directorate. This approach paves the way for other aircraft “species” to be rapidly replicated on a standard genus chassis.

This new approach also responds to the challenge of Great Power Competition by speeding delivery of affordable, advanced capability to the warfighter.

“This approach will help save time and money by leveraging standard substructures and subsystems, similar to how the automotive industry builds a product line,” Meador said. “From there, the genus can be built upon for other aircraft — similar to that of a vehicle frame — with the possibility of adding different aircraft kits to the frame, such as an Off-Board Sensing Station or Off-Board Weapon Station.”

So, what is an autonomous collaborative platform?

“We broke it down according to how the warfighter sees these put together: autonomy, human systems integration, sensor and weapons payloads, networks and communications and the air vehicle,” Meador said.

“We’ve been evolving this class of systems since the start of the Low Cost Attritable Aircraft Technologies initiative,” he added.

The major effort that initially explored the genus/species concept was the Low Cost Attritable Aircraft Platform Sharing, program, which fed technology and knowledge forward into the OBSS program that culminated with building and flying the XQ-67A, Meador said.

“The intention behind LCAAPS early on was these systems were to augment, not replace, manned aircraft,” said Trenton White, LCAAPS and OBSS program manager from AFRL’s Aerospace Systems Directorate.

In late 2014 and early 2015, the initial years of the LCAAT initiative, the team began with some in-house designs, for which Meador credits White, who led the studies early on that evolved into the requirements definition for the Low Cost Attritable Strike Demonstrator, or LCASD, Joint Capability Technology Demonstration. The LCASD team defined, designed, built and tested the XQ-58 for the first time in 2019.

“The first generation was XQ-58, and that was really about proving the concept that you could build relevant combat capability quickly and cheaply,” White said.

The OBSS program built upon the low-cost capability that LCASD proved by leveraging design and manufacturing technology research that had taken place since the first generation and was directed to reduce risk in the development of future generations, White added.

“We had always intended from the start of LCAAT to have multiple vehicle development spirals or threads of vehicle development,” White said. “Then once the vehicle is proven ready, you can start integrating stuff with it, such as sensors, autonomy, weapons, payloads and electronics.”

With the XQ-67A, the team is using the platform-sharing approach or drawing leverage from automotive industry practices.

“We are looking to leverage technology development that’s been done since XQ-58, since that first generation,” White added.

With advancements in manufacturing technology since the XQ-58, the team aimed to use that system and the technology advancements to create a system design with lower cost and faster build in mind.

“It’s all about low cost and responsiveness here,” White said.

The team began discussing LCAAPS in 2018, focusing on the notion of “can we provide the acquirer with a new way of buying aircraft that is different and better and quicker than the old traditional way of how we build manned aircraft,” Meador said. “Which means we pretty much start over from scratch every time.”

Instead, the team considered the same approach that a car manufacturer applies to building a line of vehicles, where the continuous development over time would work for aircraft, as well. 

“It’s really about leveraging this best practice that we’ve seen in the automotive and other industries where time to market has decreased, while the time to initial operating capability for military aircraft has increased at an alarming rate,” White said.

With this genus platform, White said a usable aircraft can be created faster at a lower cost with more opportunities for technology refresh and insertion if new models are being developed and rolled out every few years.

AFRL harnesses science and technology innovation for specific operational requirements to ensure meaningful military capabilities reach the hands of warfighters. The XQ-67 is the first variant to be designed and built from this shared platform, White said.

“The main objectives here are to validate an open aircraft system concept for hardware and software and to demonstrate rapid time-to-market and low development cost,” he added.

This project looked at incorporating aspects of the OBSS and the OBWS to different capability concepts. The OBSS was viewed as slower while carrying sensors but have longer endurance, while the OBWS was considered faster and more maneuverable, with less endurance but better range.

“We wanted to design both of those but figure out how much of the two you can make common so we could follow this chassis genus species type of approach,” Meador said.

XQ-67A has been just over two years in the making, moving quickly through the design, build and fly process. While the team initially worked with five industry vendors, AFRL decided at the end of 2021 to exercise the opportunity to build the General Atomics design.

This successful flight is initial proof that the genus approach works, and aircraft can be built from a chassis.

“This is all part of a bigger plan and it’s all about this affordable mass,” Meador added. “This has to be done affordably and this program — even though there’s an aircraft at the end that we’re going to get a lot of use out of — the purpose of this program was the journey of rapid, low-cost production as much as it was the destination of a relevant combat aircraft.”

This signals to other companies that there is a new approach to constructing an aircraft, moving away from the conventional method of starting from scratch, Meador said.

“We don’t have the time and resources to do that,” Meador said. “We have to move quicker now.”

By Aleah M. Castrejon, Air Force Research Laboratory Public Affairs

DroneShield Commences Development of Software Defined Radios for Next-Gen C-UAS Technologies

Friday, March 1st, 2024

DroneShield Ltd (ASX:DRO) (“DroneShield” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce it has commenced development of custom higher performance multi-channel software defined radios (“SDRs”) to be used in new evolution capabilities of future generations of its products.

The Company is a global leader in the C-UAS market, including the handheld C-UAS solutions. Part of the challenge is reducing the hardware to an ultra-small Size, Weight and Power (“SWaP”) parameters to dimensions that can be tactically deployed in the field by end users, while ensuring sufficient computing ability to run complex AI-algorithms on the devices, without referencing cloud or other systems (also known as computing on the edge). 

DroneShield presently have approximately 90 engineers in its Sydney facility. It is expected that more than 50% of the engineering team will be involved in this initiative, including Radio Frequency, Electronic Engineering, Firmware, Embedded Software, Data Science, Data, Mechanical, System and Quality Engineering.

Angus Bean, DroneShield Chief Technology Officer, commented, “As the drone threat space continues to rapidly evolve, DroneShield continues with a significant investment into next generation technologies, including moving into fully custom software defined radios in-house.”

GA-ASI Makes First Flight of XQ-67A OBSS

Friday, March 1st, 2024

SAN DIEGO – 29 February 2024 – General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) flew the XQ-67A Off-Board Sensing Station (OBSS) for the first time on Feb. 28, 2024. OBSS is an Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) program and GA-ASI was selected in 2021 to design, build and fly the new aircraft.

With flight of the AFRL-funded XQ-67A, GA-ASI has validated the “genus/species” concept first developed with AFRL as part of the Low-Cost Attritable Aircraft Platform Sharing (LCAAPS) program focused on building several aircraft variants from a common core chassis.

Under LCAAPS, AFRL and GA-ASI explored development of a chassis, termed a “genus”, as the foundational core architecture from which several “species” of aircraft can be built.

“This provides an alternative acquisition approach for military aircraft that enables faster development, lower costs and more opportunities for frequent technology refresh,” said Trenton White, OBSS Program Manager and aerospace engineer in AFRL’s Aerospace Systems Directorate. “XQ-67A is the first “species” to be designed and built from this shared platform. Flight demonstration of this system is a major first step toward showing the ability to produce affordable combat mass.”

“OBSS is the first aircraft type built and flown using a common core chassis developed by GA-ASI that promotes commonality across multiple vehicle types,” said GA-ASI Vice President of Advanced Programs Michael Atwood.

DroneShield Releases Record 2023 Annual Results, Surging to Profitability

Thursday, February 29th, 2024

DroneShield Ltd (ASX:DRO) (“DroneShield” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce the release of record full year FY23 results.

The highlights include:

• FY23: record contracts and rapidly growing cash receipts

? FY23 $73.5 million cash receipts, up 5x vs. FY22

? FY23 $55.1 million revenue, up 3x vs. FY22 

? 80% of revenues are from repeat customers

? The revenue vs. cash receipt difference mostly due to advanced payments on product subscriptions (SaaS), warranties, as well as grants received

? Largest geographical segment revenue contributions are US at 68% and Australia at 23%
 

• FY23 is first profitable year, with $9.3 million profit after tax

• Shareprice up 64% over 2023 (vs 9% for ASX300)
 

• Cash balance of $57.9 million as of 31 Dec 2023, no debt or convertibles

? Committed supply chain payments of $30 million

• $30 million contracted backlog and pipeline of over $510 million*
 

• Substantially completed expansion of the team to enable build, delivery and support of materially larger orders

? Completed move to a larger Sydney facility (3x current floor space) in January, plus supply chain partners been rapidly expanding

? No material cost to DRO to move, due to light capex model (heavy machinery work all outsourced) and landlord fitout incentive payments

? Positions the company for $300-400 million annual production capacity

? 115 team members including over 90 engineers
 

• Favourable environment for DroneShield with rapidly rising counter-drone, defence and security spending globally

? The Ukraine conflict continues to highlight the use of drones on the battlefield, which will continue driving increasing C-UAS orders even after the eventual ceasefire

? Drones increasingly used across global conflicts, including Hamas terror attack on Israel

Full Year Results Presentation can be viewed here:

Annual Report can be viewed here:

There is no assurance that any of the Company’s sales opportunities will result in sales.