Although ownership moved from Australia to the US in 2006,
Aerosonde has retained its Australian footprint and continues to develop and
assemble its small, long-endurance UAVs in a suburban Melbourne facility.
Initial development on an Aerosonde UAV stretches back to
the early 1990s, largely funded by the US Office of Naval Research but also
supported by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
With the original design specifications developed around the
requirements of scientific applications, primarily meteorological missions, the
fundamental objectives were endurance over long ranges, reliable performance in
varied terrains and climates, and competitive cost for data collection.
These attributes saw a 13kg Aerosonde Mk 2 in 1998 become
the first unmanned aircraft to cross the North Atlantic, a flight of 3,270 km
that was completed in just under 27 hours.
Since then regular enhancements in size and capability have
seen Aerosonde UAVs undertake an extraordinary range of civilian missions –
from 2006 as part of AAI which itself was purchased the following year by
Textron Systems – but until recently without making any appreciable inroads
into the military market.
This changed last year when the now AAI Unmanned Aircraft
Systems secured contracts from the US Navy (USN) and US Special Operations
Command (SOCOM) to provide turnkey UAV capabilities valued at up to US$874
million and US$600 million respectively.
Under the five-year USN contract, AAI with the
newly-developed Aerosonde Mk4.7G, and Insitu with ScanEagle and NightEagle, are
eligible to compete for Defence-wide sea- and land-based Intelligence, Surveillance
and Reconnaissance (ISR) requirements. CSC with the Arcturus T-20 is competing
with the same two companies for land-based missions.
Tasking performed under this contract requires the
contractors to provide 24/7 ISR services in direct support of worldwide combat
missions, including all planning, coordination, certification, installation,
pre-deployment, deployment, logistics, maintenance, flying and post-deployment
efforts.
Starting last December, an undisclosed number of Aerosonde
Mk4.7G systems began providing up to 3,600 hours a month of real-time, full
motion video to US Marine Corps forces in Afghanistan for up to one year, with
options to extend. The rail-launched Aerosonde Mk 4.7G is an enhancement of the
Mk 4.7 developed in 2009 as AAI’s contender for the joint USN and Marine Corps
Small Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System (STUAS/Tier II) competition eventually
won by Insitu’s Integrator.
The G variant features a 4hp heavy fuel engine, strengthened
3.8 metre wings to survive more net-based recoveries, and an operational
endurance of up to 16 hours. It utilises AAI’s Expeditionary Ground Control
Station.
While the standard ISR payload is a combined
electro-optical/infrared and laser pointer system, AAI has been exploring a
range of other systems, including ITT communications, Soldier Radio Waveform
and unattended ground system radio relays.
The 32-kg platform – almost twice the weight of the earlier
Mk 4.7 – is also being used by the US Army’s Research, Development and
Engineering Command’s Communications-Electronics Research, Development and
Engineering Centre is to evaluate signals intelligence and measurement and
signature intelligence systems
AAI’s successful bid in March 2012 to displace incumbent
Insitu and ScanEagle and win the three-year mid-endurance UAS (Unmanned Aerial
System) SOCOM contract featured the G variant as its centrepiece.
However, US media reported in February that the contract had
reverted to Insitu after AAI publically acknowledged it had underestimated the
resources and costs required to set up Aerosonde fee-for-service operations
simultaneously for SOCOM and the USN.
Aerosonde in Australia said the company was still working
with SOCOM “to pursue common interests” but declined further comment.
Yet to be decided is an urgent operational requirement to
provide an unmanned aerial surveillance system for Royal Navy Type 23 frigates
and Royal Fleet Auxiliary support ships.
This again pits a Boeing/Insitu ScanEagle proposal against the Aerosonde
Mk 4.7G, this time offered by EADS company Cassidian in partnership with
Textron and Cranfield Aerospace.
The contract is worth about US$52 million and is expected to
run until at least May 2015, although there are options to extend the service
beyond that date.
Civilian experience
Jack Kormas, Aerosonde’s Melbourne-based Director of
Operations, readily acknowledges the benefits derived from the hard-won
experience gained from civilian missions in inhospitable environments.
These include more than 1,000 flight hours over five years
from 2001 gathering atmospheric and environmental data in Barrow, Alaska, in
support of University of Colorado/National Science Foundation research on
arctic warming.
As part of earlier work with NASA and the US National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an Aerosonde completed a historic
17-hour flight into the eye of Hurricane Noel in 2007. This followed a flight
into the heart of Tropical Storm Ophelia off the North Carolina coastline in
2005.
Two years later four Aerosondes flying from McMurdo Sound logged
more than 130 flight hours and flew nearly 7,000 miles participating in a
University of Colorado exploration of the katabatic winds present on the
coast of Antarctica.
This involved flights of up to 17 hours battling 90kph winds
and temperatures down to -38 deg Celsius; missions repeated on a second
six-week deployment to McMurdo last year.
Aerosonde’s first operational military role saw four
airframes deployed to the Solomon Islands in 2003 to support the ADF as part of
the Regional Assistance to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI), providing day and night
surveillance missions as well as acting as communications relays for
ground-based forces in remote areas of the islands.
These were drawn from aircraft used by DSTO in its NERVANA
tactical UAV experimentation program, which includes work on swarming
techniques.
“We’ve not only had six aircraft up at once autonomously
positioning each other away from each other, but also a larger number of
simulated aircraft in battlespace experiments that were able to communicate
with each other and maintain horizontal and vertical separation while
continuing their primary role of intelligence,” Kormas says.
“We continue to support DSTO on these sorts of projects.
Last year we spent three weeks at Woomera with DSTO conducting EW research
missions where we had five aircraft in the air simultaneously.”
As with most UAVs, Aerosonde is delivered as a complete
system which includes three airframes with associated payloads, a
launch/recovery trailer, antennas and a ground control station. The entire
system is transportable by one C-130.
The aircraft are flown by an Air Vehicle Operator trained by
AAI in the US in a two-month course, and a Mission Payload Operator who
operates the cameras streaming live video, electro-optical and infrared imagery
to a central command post.
The carbon fibre composite wing of the Mk 4.7G UAV is an AAI
design manufactured in the US by a third party, although Aerosonde supplies
some componentry for it. Construction of the carbon fibre composite airframe
takes place in Melbourne as does the integration of avionics and communications
equipment within it, after which it is sent to AAI in Maryland for integration
with the wing and a test flight.
Currently under development in Melbourne is the Mk 4.7J, a
UAV targeted for the civilian market and activities such as search and rescue,
and fire and crop monitoring.
The new aircraft will utilise the same airframe as the Mk
4.7 but will use a proprietary Aerosonde 3HP engine to ensure weight is kept
below the 25kg limit mandated by both CASA and the FAA for flight in national
airspace. Kormas says the company is talking with first responders, and is
working with an undisclosed launch customer.
