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2019-12-05

GA-ASI’s RPA Sets Industry Record

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) announced that its Predator-series of Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) surpassed six million flight hours. With the Predator-series family including the Predator A and Predator XP, Predator B/MQ-9A Reaper, Predator B Extended Range (ER), the Guardian, Gray Eagle/ER, Predator C Avenger/ER, the MQ-9B SkyGuardian and SeaGuardian, the GA-ASI aircraft have completed 430,495 total missions with about 90 per cent of those missions flown in combat.

“Six million flight hours is a testament to the reliability of our unmanned aircraft systems, designed, built and sustained by a dedicated group of skilled and innovative professionals for operations around the world,” said Linden Blue, CEO of GA-ASI. “In more than 25 years in business, GA-ASI has achieved a list of historic ‘firsts’ in RPA development and we have leveraged those accomplishments to support our customer’s requirements better.”

The identification of the specific aircraft achieving the milestone has not been possible because at every second of every day 69 Predator-class Medium-altitude, Long-endurance (MALE) RPA are airborne throughout the world. In fact, flight hours have continued to grow at unprecedented rates in recent years, with 500,000 flight hours achieved over 1993-2008, one million in 2010, two million hours in 2012, three million in 2014, four million hours in 2016 and five million in 2018.

“The demand for persistent situational awareness using our RPA is demonstrated daily through the accumulation of flight hours. The demand for our aircraft is consistently answered by our team of employees, suppliers, and partners who work hard to meet our customers’ dynamic mission requirements,” said David R. Alexander, President of GA-ASI. “Because of the dedication of our employees, our suppliers and partners, our aircraft have the highest mission capable rate in the USAF aircraft inventory.”

GA-ASI aircraft average more than 60,000 hours per month supporting the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Department of Homeland Security, NASA, along with the Italian Air Force, the Royal Air Force, the French Air Force, the UAE. Armed Forces and other customers. These aircraft systems continue to maintain the highest mission capable-rates for U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army aircraft inventories for missions such as helping protect ground units on the battlefield, supporting U.S. Customs & Border Protection operations and providing first responders in the wake of natural disasters.

GA-ASI has produced more than 900 aircraft and over 400 Ground Control Stations (GCS), but in addition to RPA and GCS, GA-ASI also manufactures Processing, Exploitation and Dissemination (PED) systems alongside sensor payloads to deliver radar and video imagery, detect moving targets on the ground or over water and provide Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) on signals of interest. GA-ASI also integrates the data products from these disparate sensors in real time via SATCOM data links to the GCS which can be correlated and displayed as actionable intelligence for use in Operations and Intelligence Centres all around the world.

End-of-year European Capability Demonstrations

In conjunction with the Hellenic Air Force (HAF) in Greece, GA-ASI will be conducting a series of demonstration flights for European countries in December. Flights will be based in the HAF’s site in Larissa and will use a GA-ASI MQ-9 Guardian RPA to showcase maritime surveillance capabilities, as well as a GA-ASI-developed Detect and Avoid (DAA) system enabling RPA to fly safely alongside manned aircraft in civil airspace.

“We appreciate the HAF’s support in helping showcase the maritime surveillance and civil airspace integration capabilities of our unmanned aircraft in Europe,” said Blue. “The demand for affordable, long-endurance airborne surveillance of the seas surrounding Europe is growing.”

The demonstration configuration is based on the MQ-9 systems operated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in support of its maritime surveillance roles, while the DAA system consists of an air-to-air radar and processor integrated with Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS II) and Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B). GA-ASI has now made an operational DAA system available in the United States and the system’s collision-avoidance radar provides an essential safety feature for integrating unmanned aircraft into civil airspace.

The MQ-9 system will also demonstrate a multi-mode maritime surface-search radar with Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR) mode, an Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver and High-Definition/Full-Motion Video sensor equipped with optical and infrared cameras. This sensor suite enables real-time detection and identification of surface vessels over thousands of square nautical miles, while the featured Raytheon SeaVue surface-search radar system provides automatic tracking of maritime targets and correlation of AIS transmitters with radar detection.

GA-ASI is also partnering with SES, a leading satellite communications (SATCOM) operator and managed services provider in possession of over 70 satellites in Geostationary Orbit (GEO) and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO). SES will provide the GEO satellite connectivity that enables the MQ-9 to operate securely with a high capacity datalink, ensuring real-time transmission of sensor data from the aircraft and extending its effective operational range far beyond that of ‘line-of-sight’ datalinks.

Nicole Robinson, Senior Vice President, Global Government at SES Networks is proud of the company’s record: “With our global satellite fleet, SES has been supporting the critical needs of GA-ASI and their government customers who have operated these aircraft for close to two decades. We are proud to support this demonstration effort for the Hellenic Air Force as part of our long-standing relationship with General Atomics.”

GA-ASI Displays Multi-Mission Control and Metis

Recently, the company successfully demonstrated its advanced Multi-Mission Control (MMC) and Metis capabilities during a live flight using company-owned MQ-9 Block 1 and MQ-9 Block 5 Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) in North Dakota. The flights demonstrated a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 7 capability, and promise applications across military forces and for non-defence missions.

The MMC capabilities enable a single pilot to control multiple MQ-9s, with applications in transit, routine Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions. Metis makes the ISR lifecycle faster and more efficient by seamlessly integrating joint force ISR tasking requirements with the MMC to dynamically task MQ-9 assets. It also reports task status and shares ISR information with a simple social media-like interface through the streamlines graphic interface and features lightweight hand controller.

“The MMC capabilities has the potential to dramatically increase the effectiveness and efficiency of any Air Force’s MQ-9 enterprise by relieving aircrew manning requirements during certain flight profiles,” said Alexander.

He adds that MMC and Metis combined with SATCOM launch and recovery, and the advanced cockpit can reduce aircrew manning by 50 per cent. Considered an essential evolution in the way operators control RPA, MMC with GA-ASI’s advanced cockpit provides Artificial Intelligence-based automatic functions like ISR data processing and natural language processing. The open architecture of MMC also allows integration with the Open Mission System (OMS) standard and other aircraft like the MQ-1C Gray Eagle.

MMC enables efficient use of manpower in MQ-9 operations by increasing loiter time for highly tasked MQ-9 crew force or expanding missions provided in support of the Combatant Commander while Metis enhances communications between supported units, aircrew, and intelligence cells.

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