Plans by the U.S. military to consolidate its numbers of ground control stations for unmanned aircraft systems may be moving forward with the announcement Tuesday of a contract to General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. to integrate a Universal Ground Control Station.
The U.S. Army Contracting Command at Redstone Arsenal, Ala., awarded General Atomics Aeronautical Systems a $9 million contract Friday for the procurement of the Universal Ground Control Station integration. General Atomics designs a variety of UAS, including the I-GNAT, I-GNAT ER/Sky Warrior Alpha, Predator, Sky Warrior, and Reaper. AAI Corp. in Hunt Valley, Md., builds a universal ground control station for Army UAS.
Officials of the Army and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) for about two years now have discussed plans to develop a common UAS ground control station to fly a wide variety of unmanned aircraft. Traditionally UAV control stations have been specific to UAS vendors and to specific versions of UASZ. Each military service has used a different kind of UAS control station and software to control its unmanned aircraft.
General Atomics designs several kinds of control stations for its UAS — including models able to control many UAS at once — but thus far has not mass-produced a UAS ground control station able to control many different models of UAS, including those made by different companies. Historically General Atomics as been the U.S. Air Force’s vendor of choice for UAS ground control stations.
DOD and Army officials for the past two years have been discussing developing one UAS piloting station to fly different kinds of UAS. The idea is to develop software plug-ins for each different kind of existing UAS, and for those in development. Military leaders want this universal ground control station to have an open-systems hardware and software architecture.
On this latest contract, General Atomics will do the work in Poway, Calif., and should be finished by the end of June.
Source: Military & Aerospace Electronics