Up and Soaring - UAS

Navy launches fuel cell-powered UAV from submerged submarine

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), with funding from SwampWorks at the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the Department of Defense Rapid Reaction Technology Office (DoD/RRTO), recently demonstrated the launch of an all-electric, fuel cell-powered, unmanned aerial system (UAS) from a submerged submarine.

Operating under support of the Los Angeles-class USS Providence (SSN 719) and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center-Newport Division (NUWC-NPT), the NRL-developed XFC UAS – eXperimental Fuel Cell Unmanned Aerial System – was fired from the submarine’s torpedo tube using a Sea Robin launch vehicle system fitted within an empty launch canister used for launching Tomahawk cruise missiles. The launch vehicle rose to the ocean surface where the sub’s commanding officer launched the XFC, which flew a successful several hour mission demonstrating live video capabilities streamed back to Providence, surface support vessels, and Norfolk before landing at the Naval Sea Systems Command Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center (AUTEC), Andros, Bahamas.

The successful submerged launch of a remotely deployed UAS offers a pathway to providing mission-critical intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities to the U.S. Navy’s submarine force. www.nrl.navy.mil
 

Amazon readying UAVs for package deliveries

Jeff Bezos, president of online retail giant Amazon, created a media sensation in November when he revealed the company’s R&D lab was developing UAVs for package delivery. Branded under the premium service, Prime Air, the goal of the UAV delivery system is to get packages into customers’ hands in 30 minutes or less.

“Safety will be our top priority, and our vehicles will be built with multiple redundancies and designed to commercial aviation standards,” the company stated in a press release. Amazon will be “ready to enter commercial operations as soon as the necessary regulations are in place,” referring to FAA regulations integrating UAVs into national airspace by September 2015. A video of a test flight is on the website. www.amazon.com/b?node=8037720011
 

NASA deploys Global Hawks for hurricane research

NASA’s Hurricane and Severe Storms Sentinel (HS3) airborne mission for the 2013 Atlantic Ocean hurricane season featured two unmanned Global Hawks that flew from the agency’s Wallops Island, Va., facility for the first time. Mission highlights included studying the Saharan Air Layer, following the genesis of a tropical storm, finding a unique hybrid core or center circulation in a redeveloped storm, obtaining measurements on the strongest side of one of the season’s few hurricanes, an investigation of a storm that was almost certain to develop but didn’t, and a landmark 100th flight for the Hawks.

The Global Hawks were based at Wallops from mid-August to the end of September 2013, where they reached a combined 100 NASA flights.

One aircraft, focused on the storm environment, carries a payload of instruments that include the Cloud Physics Lidar, Scanning High-Resolution Interferometer Sounder Instrument, and NOAA’s dropsonde system that measures winds, temperature, and humidity as it falls through the atmosphere. Sondes were dropped out of the tail of the Global Hawk during the mission.

HS3’s over-storm Global Hawk, which focuses on measurements of storm internal structure, carried the Hurricane Imaging Radiometer, the High-altitude Imaging Wind and Rain Airborne Profiler, and the High-Altitude Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits Sounding Radiometer on a flight over Hurricane Ingrid on Sept. 15, 2013, as the storm moved through the extreme southwestern Gulf of Mexico.

Although there were no major hurricanes, scientists were able to gather a large amount of data on several storms and explore the Saharan Air Layer using the two Global Hawks and their unique suites of instruments.

The HS3 mission came to an end when NASA 872 departed at 9:49 a.m. EDT on Sept. 26, 2013, on a 10-hour flight back to NASA Dryden Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. www.nasa.gov