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.
It’s only a few weeks into the new year, yet there’s plenty happening in “UAV land” already. I expect another year of innovations, novel developments and groundbreaking firsts in unmanned aircraft.
This month’s question: What’s a Skyborg? The U.S. Air Force (USAF) has awarded contracts to Kratos, Boeing and General Atomics to prove their approaches to the UAV program.
All three have fielded existing, company-developed drones which are intended to fly alongside and be controlled by the latest frontline U.S. fighter aircraft. The idea is to have expendable force-multiplier unmanned aircraft support the capabilities of high tech, hugely expensive aircraft in order to undertake perhaps more risky missions, with the potential improvement acceptable versus unacceptable losses.
Flying alongside frontline fighter aircraft, these jet-powered unmanned aircraft could undertake more risky close support parts of the mission, where loss of the UAV might be more likely, while the manned aircraft remains outside the high-risk envelope. Hence the term attritable is now being applied to these unmanned accompanying vehicles, which are intended to have a reduced cost profile so that loss of the UAV might be more tolerable.
The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) has awarded Skyborg Vanguard Program contract amounts to Boeing ($25.7 million), General Atomics ($14.3 million) and Kratos ($37.8 million) for initial prototyping. All appear to have Skyborg prototypes in development.
Kratos has subsequently announced other contract modifications related to the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Low Cost Attritable Aircraft Technology (LCAAT) program.
Boeing will offer a variant of the Airpower Teaming System (ATS) drone being developed in Australia for the Australian Air Force. Engine runs and initial taxi tests were recently completed, however the program went into a short hiatus at the end of 2020 because of high COVID-19 infection rates in and around Sydney.
Boeing will offer a variant of the ATS drone being developed for the Australian Air Force. (Photo: Boeing)
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. (GA-ASI) is in the process of modifying two company-owned Avenger UAVs to incorporate upgraded datalinks and the Skyborg System Design Agent (SDA) software. Flight trials will investigate Artificial Intelligence capability for autonomous control of the UAVs while operating alongside manned aircraft – with the object of demonstrating that “a mix of manned and unmanned aircraft can communicate, collaborate, and operate together,” said David R. Alexander, president of GA-ASI.
General Atomics Avenger unmanned aircraft. (Photo: GA-ASI)
The jet-powered Avenger aircraft has been under development and evaluation for more than 10 years so it is well characterized, and its performance as a UAV is already understood.
The XQ-58A Valkyrie UAV has benefited from earlier generations of Kratos high-speed jet-powered target systems — something none of the other Skyborg competitors have in their bag of tricks. Kratos has been providing high-speed target drones to the military for a number of years, so jet powered drones are something they have been developing and fielding for a long time.
The Valkyrie UAV was developed under the LCAAT program to demonstrate unmanned low-cost capabilities, and to fly as a stealthy companion to manned aircraft. It is intended to carry internal and wing mounted weapons. The turbine division of Kratos is also investigating lower cost jet engine options for attritable UAVs.
Meanwhile, continuing developments in detect and avoid (DAA) are progressing, moving towards a solution for one of the main problems holding back integration of unmanned aircraft into controlled airspace.
A number of these solutions are based on ADS-B or Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast, whereby the UAV location – usually position provided by onboard GPS — is transmitted at a regular interval by an equipped UAV. So any similarly equipped manned or unmanned aircraft can receive the ADS-B signal, has knowledge of where such flying obstacles might be and is therefore able to avoid a potential collision.
And for pseudo-satellite applications like the Airbus Zephyr which must transition between low-level airspace and the stratosphere, having on-board certified ADS-B is essential so that other aircraft and FAA air-traffic control have full visibility of such a delicate airframe which is lacking great maneuverability during climb-out, on station at altitude and during descent.
Zephyr pseudo-satellite UAV with uAvionix ADS-B transponder and GPS. (Photo: uAvionics)
Since Zephyr transitions through Class A airspace, the manufacturer Airbus decided that it should be equipped with an ADS-B transponder and GPS source which had undergone FAA recognized qualification testing and which meets known Technical Standard Order (TSO) requirements.
The equipment also needed to be small and use little power — at 70 grams and using only 2 watts, the uAvionix ping 200X transponder and truFYX GPS provide high power (54 dBm), high integrity transmissions of ADS-B and transponder mode data to Air Traffic Control (ATC) and other suitably equipped aircraft.
Zephyr is an all-electric vehicle, using sunlight to derive power from large photo-voltaic arrays which cover its upper surfaces. Batteries store surplus energy which is not consumed during daylight and provide power in order to maintain aircraft station through the night hours. From a perch at around 70,000ft, Zephyr is apparently focused on Earth-observation capability with payloads envisaged to include Electro Optical, Infrared, Hyper spectral, Passive Radio Frequency (RF) Radar, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), plus Early Warning, Lidar and Automatic Identification System (AIS).
The Hover DAA solution. (Photo: Sagetech)
“Sagetech is another DAA supplier which is currently working with both fixed and rotary wing UAS customers who are incorporating DAA systems in their design and type certification projects,” said Tom Furey, CEO of Sagetech. “Sagetech is providing regulatory guidance, transponders and interrogators, and system design to ensure these UAV systems in development will satisfy the anticipated certification requirements. Sagetech itself, through technology development and partnerships with companies including Hover Inc., expects to offer a complete DAA prototype system by the end of this year.”
So, lots of progress towards Skyborg drone teaming systems with $78min awards by the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center from an anticipated budget of around $400m, while certified Detect and Avoid solutions help move commercial drones towards potential regular flight in controlled airspace.
With tariffs, trade wars and sanctions ruling the day, how is a self-respecting UAS manufacturer supposed to make a buck? And to whom are the manufacturers of defense UAS able to sell their wares?
To NATO and other friendly countries, comes the ready answer, but there may still be a problem selling drones with armaments and offensive capabilities. Another layer of governmental review could swing into action when a company wants to sell to friendly countries like Saudi Arabia or perhaps to allies within the old Russian USSR block.
Last year, General Atomics lost sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for Predators and/or Reapers, large-bodied medium-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aircraft systems (or MALES). The deal went instead to a competing Chinese outfit. General Atomics complained bitterly about the loss of this business, which it blamed on restrictive U.S. export rules. The Administration responded by apparently loosening the regulations, in fact easing the way for most international sales. In response, it is possible that UAV manufacturers have also undertaken some changes which make U.S. drones even more competitive for export.
Business matters appear to have improved significantly. In May this year, the State Department actually used emergency provisions within the Arms Control Act to bypass Congressional review of a proposed sale to Saudi Arabia, UAE and Jordan of a package of Insitu Blackjack drones and launchers, worth $80 million.
The competition for world-wide sales of U.S. UAS products is increasingly tough, especially against Chinese suppliers with equivalent or perhaps less capable mil-spec drones. Hence the export rule changes which now appear to be working in the right direction.
Chinese Drones in the U.S.
Meanwhile, in an effort to accommodate U.S. concerns about the potential for user data somehow “leaking” to DJI — the Chinese supplier of almost 75% of U.S. drone purchases — DJI has implemented a “Government Edition” which apparently addresses the risk of data loss.
When US-based 3D Robotics stopped supplying 3DR Solo drones, the Interior Department found itself in a bind, as it had already bought hundreds of these devices for its inspection/surveillance operations. As the department searched for a new source for UAVs, it came to the conclusion that U.S. supplied drones were much less capable or up to ten times more expensive than equivalent DJI units. So they began working with DJI to solve the issue with potential data loss, and went on to test the results extensively
Working with the U.S. Interior Department for over 18 months, DJI has equipped drones and their controllers with modified hardware and custom software that ensure that the drones only operate in local data mode: information collected in flight is stored on the UAV alone and must be manually downloaded after flight. The drone is actually loaded with custom software by the user prior to flight to ensure this mode of data collection.
Even with these modifications, for now the use of DJI drones is still restricted to non-sensitive applications.
USAF/Kratos XQ-58A
The XQ-58A Valkyrie demonstrator, a long-range, high subsonic UAV completed its inaugural flight March 5, 2019, at Yuma Proving Grounds, Arizona. (Photo: U.S. Defense Department)
Kratos is working with the U.S. Air Force to develop a jet-powered UAV system that can fly alongside manned fighter aircraft to multiply their effectiveness. At much lower cost than manned aircraft, the concept appears to be that more risk can be taken with the ‘loyal wingman’ UAVs to not only support the mission of the attack aircraft, but to also keep it safe.
We reported earlier on the XQ-58A after its first flight in March of this year. Now the Valkyrie is back in the flight test program with its second flight lasting 71 minutes over the Yuma test range on June 11. In the long- erm, it is hoped that both ground controllers and flight crew would operate these extensively autonomous drones.
A parallel “Skyborg” program is also underway to develop the hardware and artificial intelligence software capability to enable this type of drone to fly and fight alongside manned aircraft.
In conclusion, trade wars and tariffs aside, let’s hope that good UAV products can still make headway on their merits alone.
