GUY NORRIS / LOS ANGELES
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) says integration of the unmanned air vehicle common automatic recovery system (UCARS) into the RQ-1 Predator is 90% complete, over 400 automatic recoveries being achieved in laboratory simulations and flight tests.
UCARS is a millimetre-wave tracking radar and guidance system that provides position data and guidance commands to automatically recover UAVs on land or aboard ships. The US Department of Defense UCARS work is aimed at providing a common automated recovery system for a wide range of UAVs to reduce operational losses, training requirements and costs.
Developed by Sierra Nevada, UCARS consists of a portable track subsystem (TS) and an airborne subsystem. The latter transmits to the TS which computes the guidance commands and transmits the data to the airborne system via the recovery one. For shipboard UAV recoveries, the UCARS will have an additional sensor to compensate for the ship's motion.
The UCARS work also includes integration with the Pioneer UAV, as well as the Northrop Grumman vertical take-off VT-UAV. GA-ASI says several elements of the Predator UCARS system have been tested and integration software has been run in the company's laboratory. It adds that in light of tightening USAF budgets, it is considering company funding to complete the trials, including end-to-end flight tests of the entire system.
In parallel with UCARS, GA-ASI is testing a differential GPS-satellite navigation (DGPS)-based autoland system that works in parallel with UCARS, providing dual redundancy. Operators are able to link into the system through a man machine interface that is common to UCARS and DGPS. GA-ASI says that if the systems deviate during the final approach to recovery, and if parameters exceed predetermined thresholds, the Predator is programmed to execute a missed approach and go-around.
GA-ASI says UCARS will be offered on the powerful, turbofan-powered Predator B. It will also be on the Honeywell TPE331 turboprop-powered variant, which began test flights in February.
Source: Flight International
