Aurora Flight Sciences announced that it has joined the Raytheon team for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Persistent Close Air Support (PCAS) programme.
The PCAS solution of Raytheon is targeted at developing technologies that will decrease the timeline for close air support as a result of the enhanced coordination among airborne sensors, joint terminal attack controllers (JTACs), and weapon systems. Aurora will lead the development of the air vehicle platform and will develop an unmanned version of the Air Force’s A-10 aircraft by leveraging its absolute unmanned systems technology, thereby illustrating the PCAS technology.
Aurora’s President and CEO, John Langford says that its achievement of the contract to develop critical aircraft technologies for the DARPA PCAS programme is one of the major milestones that resulted from its association with Loiter Attack Missile (LAM) and unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) programmes way back in the 1990s. The firm further anticipates developing its collaboration with Raytheon on an extensive series of unmanned systems technologies in the forthcoming years.
Rockwell Collins and GE Aviation are also a part of Raytheon’s PCAS team. In order to demonstrate the capability to digitally acquire a Close Air Support (CAS) platform from the ground, PCAS will integrate a ‘system-of-systems’ approach. Furthermore, open architecture approach will also be employed by Raytheon to facilitate the utilisation of PCAS technology for future command and control systems.
Source: Press Release