Dave Vos, senior director of UAS and Rockwell Collins Control Technologies, spoke at AUVSI 2011. The focus of his conference included details on technology developments that are enabling the convergence on manned and unmanned aircraft and the company’s latest activities in the UAV marketplace, including videos of recent tests and new contract wins.
6. Rockwell Collins now on 25 UAV platforms Insitu’s Scan Eagle Navy & Marine Corps NGC Navy UCAS AAI Corporation’s Shadow- US Army Thales Watchkeeper Alenia’s Sky-X Textron Systems U-ADD General Atomics’ ER/MP Warrior CEi’s Air Force BQM-167A Target Aurora Flight Sciences GoldenEye General Atomics’ Predator NGC Global Hawk EMT Luna NGC Firescout MMIST SnowGoose Aurora Flight Sciences Excalibur
Thank you Dave – As Dave has indicated we’ve made some very significant progress since I first started talking about the convergence of manned and unmanned aircraft.Future airspace initiatives like NextGen and Sesar – continue to play a role in that convergence – and I’ll talk about that a little later on. Meantime, back at Rockwell Collins, we are making some exciting progress in the UAS field as well – and that’s well I’ll start today.
You may recall last year, hearing about Damage Tolerance tests that took place with the Shadow UAV.Last fall, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) teamed with the U.S. Army and Rockwell Collins to demonstrate Damage Tolerance Control (DTC) on the RQ-7B Shadow Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS), marking the first time that the technology has been tested on a fielded platform. To Flight testing took place over several weeks at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. The testing verified performance of DTC to determine the limits of damage that aircraft can handle, provided the Army with an understanding of DTC’s operational benefits to the Shadow UAS mission and generated awareness of overall progress in adaptive controls technology to encourage continued advancement in operational applications. Let’s take a look at that video – which we’re viewing for the first time publicly today.