French armaments agency (DGA) has contracted for several VTUAS demonstrations. Among them is a Thales-led effort to work with Boeing’s Unmanned Littlebird (a modified AH-6i) to explore various challenging elements of VTUAS operations on land and at sea.
The Unmanned Littlebird is currently undergoing a series of flight trials that are slated to wrap up next month. The tests include landing on a sloped surface to demonstrate to the French army that the system can handle rugged terrain, says Dino Cerchie, Boeing’s Unmanned Littlebird program manager.
A week ago, the Unmanned Littlebird performed its first landings on a moving platform to simulate on-deck operations. The 16 X 16-ft. platform—equipped with a NATO-standard 1.8-meter (5.9-ft.) helicopter landing grid—is towed by a truck representing speeds up to 20 kt. The demonstrations are being conducted at the commercial spaceport in New Mexico because of range considerations.
During an initial set of nine landings, the system achieved an average accuracy of tens of centimeters using Thales’s automatic takeoff-and-landing system. The performance was compared to the accuracy using a differential-GPS landing system provided by Boeing, and the radar-based approach was far more accurate, says Jean-Noel Stock, head of UAV systems for Thales.
The Thales system is derived from the Magic Atols system developed by Thales for the Watchkeeper but adapted for ship-based operations. Primarily, that means it can deal with the cluttered electromagnetic environment around a ship and the vessel’s pitch-and-roll movements. The modified Magic Atols uses two radars receiving a signal from a beacon on the air vehicle.
Thales and Boeing are working with DCNS to help determine ship-deck movements in high sea states. The companies also have built a moving platform to simulate deck landings. The Unmanned Littlebird will fly approaches to that platform and hover over the moving “deck,” although actual landings will not be performed.
The initial round of trials should be concluded next month. The French government then will have to decide whether it will exercise any options for another phase, during which on-ship landings would be performed, likely using a Lafayette-class frigate. Timing would be contingent on ship availability, but that demonstration would probably unfold next year.The DGA also is working with the smaller Schiebel S-100 unmanned rotorcraft to assess its capabilities.
Source: Aviation Week