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Tag: Kratos Defense & Security Solutions

  • Kratos Air Wolf Tactical Drone System completes successful flight at Burns Flat, Oklahoma Range Facility

    Kratos Air Wolf Tactical Drone System completes successful flight at Burns Flat, Oklahoma Range Facility

    The Air Wolf just prior to Burns Flat dawn launch. (Photo: Kratos)
    The Air Wolf just prior to Burns Flat dawn launch. (Photo: Kratos)

    Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, a provider of national security solutions, has announced that its Air Wolf Tactical Drone System has completed a 100 percent successful flight at the recently approved Burns Flat, Oklahoma Range Facility. The Kratos Air Wolf Mission, which was the inaugural flight at the Burns Flat Range location, included multiple new payloads carried by the Air Wolf UAV, including a proprietary Kratos artificial intelligence/autonomy system, which has been developed by Kratos specifically for high performance, jet UAV aircraft.

    Air Wolf is one of several drones in Kratos’ family of jet drones that are flying today, also including the attritable UTAP-22 Mako, XQ-58A Valkyrie, and, in conjunction with the company’s partner Dynetics, the reusable X-61A Gremlins drone. According to the company, the newly approved Burns Flat Test Range and Facility is an important new strategic asset available to it, enabling the company to accelerate its drone testing and demonstration, further increasing its ability to rapidly develop and demonstrate jet drones, supporting subsystems, and other tactical systems and aircraft.

    Kratos develops and fields technology, platforms, and systems for United States national security-related customers, allies, and commercial enterprises. The company specializes in unmanned systems, satellite communications, cyber security/warfare, microwave electronics, missile defense, hypersonic systems, training, combat systems and next generation turbo jet and turbo fan engine development.

  • Self-driving work zone vehicles enhance safety

    Screenshot: Kratos Defense & Security Solutions/Royal Truck & Equipment ATMA brochure
    Screenshot: Kratos Defense & Security Solutions/Royal Truck & Equipment ATMA brochure

    Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, a developer of advanced unmanned system technologies, has teamed with Royal Truck & Equipment, which builds Truck Mounted Attenuator (TMA) vehicles and highway safety systems, to deploy the Autonomous Truck Mounted Attenuator (ATMA), a self-driving work zone vehicle. The ATMA is an autonomous vehicle that uses driverless technology.

    According to the company, highway workers are routinely placed in high-risk situations, but are at especially high risk when assigned to drive a TMA vehicle. The TMA vehicle, also known as an Impact Protection Vehicle, is a truck that follows behind slow moving highway maintenance vehicles as a human-driven mobile crash barrier absorbing the impact of traffic accidentally entering the work zone.

    “Driving a TMA is extremely dangerous and drivers are at serious risk of lifelong injury, painful rehabilitation and even death,” said Maynard Factor, business development director at Kratos Defense. “To eliminate this dangerous assignment, Kratos Defense developed the Autonomous TMA (ATMA) by retrofitting standard TMA vehicles with driverless technology to enable unmanned operation.”

    The first ATMA systems were deployed in 2017 and have since then been deployed across the United States and Europe. The unmanned ATMA operates in a multi-vehicle leader/follower configuration with a human driven highway maintenance vehicle, the companies said. In the leader/follower configuration, the system enables the maintenance vehicle (leader) to transmit navigation data via encrypted V2V communications to the ATMA (follower). From there, the ATMA uses the data to follow the leader, unmanned, as it travels along the route.

    The ATMA systems features component redundancy, an active safety system, high accuracy GPS/GPS-denied navigation, encrypted V2V communications, and multi-modal front and side-view obstacle detection, the companies added. It also includes a user interface that provides system feedback, situational awareness, multi-camera views and operator controls.

    “Highways are becoming increasingly dangerous due to distracted drivers texting, following too closely, falling asleep, etc., and work zone fatalities from traffic-related crashes average in the hundreds per year,” Factor said. “Our main goal in developing the ATMA was to increase worker safety by removing them from behind the wheel of a vehicle deployed for the sole purpose of operating as a crash barrier.”

    Kratos Defense & Security Solutions will be exhibiting at AUVSI’s Xponential 2019 at booth #226.