The US Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service wants to lease close range UAVs equipped with thermal imaging sensors to conduct mapping of wildfires in the western states from July through to September this year.
The service is also expected to be used as a communications relay node, augmenting the existing Forest Service fire reporting system during operations.
The solicitation is being restricted to small businesses, providing opportunity for second and third tier US UAV manufacturers to significantly raise their profile in the civilian applications marketplace.
Most previous US fire watch demonstrations have been performed using large tactical and endurance class UAVs.
The close range system may be used for other roles during the lease period. The solicitation says that planning is underway for the system to be used to support forest inventory mapping in Nevada.
Solicitation documents say that: “The primary intended use of the selected unmanned air system will be to provide tactical thermal imaging and communications support to a wildfire incident command during extended attack. The site and dates for deployment will be determined during the early stages of the fire season. The expected location of wildfire incident support will likely be in the Rocky Mountain States and west.
“The secondary desired use of the selected unmanned air system will be to acquire high resolution imagery over selected forest inventory assessment locations in central Nevada. The exact sites and dates for deployment will be agreed upon by the service vendor and the Forest Service.”
System capabilities sought are based on an 8h per day operational tempo, with surge capability doubling this to 16h in any 24h period for a maximum of 10 days over any 30 day period. The air vehicle itself is expected to have a basic endurance of 8h but with 12h preferred.
The aircraft would be capable of flight operations at 15,000ft density altitude, but with average mission altitudes expected to range between 500ft and 3000ft above ground level. It would cruise at between 40-60kt
Launch and recovery would be from austere and unprepared surfaces, with this including in forest environments where trees and other obstacles may reach up to 100ft in height. In parallel, the solicitation asks that specific launch and recovery phase hardware be minimised.
Air traffic integration requirements include painting air vehicles in a high visibility colour scheme and fitting visible navigation lighting.
Aircraft sensor suite requirements include both electro optic and thermal imaging requirements, with these preferably configured as interchangeable modules. Both sensor types are expected to be fully gimballed and stabilised. The thermal imaging sensor is required to be able to geolocate fire fronts and hot spots to within less than 10 meters. All sensor data is expected to be provided in open source formats to ensure use in a variety of emergency response management command and control systems.
The system datalink is required to provide at least a 25nm radius of operations. In the event of lost link, the UAV is expected to be able to either perform a recovery flight profile or return to its operating site to enable safe recovery. The datalink is also expected to be able to be interoperable with remote receiver systems currently used by the US Department of Homeland Security and the US Air National Guard.
The ground control station (GCS) would be fully mobile with a complete system including UAVs and support equipment to be transportable using a standard American pickup class truck, and operated by a crew of no more than four personnel
Mission planning tools sought include an automatic altitude referencing capability to ensure operators are pre-warned of potential ground collisions during mission planning and flight phases.
The Forest Service is also looking for options on a remote viewing terminal capability which can be operated in the field by a single fire fighter.
Source: FlightGlobal.com
