Long-Duration, Eye-in-the-Sky Monitoring for Airfield Threat Detection

In today’s Urban-Warfare C2ISR environment, all UAS platforms have an operationally-limited sensor capability with power consumption and recharge times that are a major problem making them unsuitable for many battlefield environments. Much of the research done to date has concentrated on minimizing the size of the UAS to minimize the battery power required to complete a mission. There is now another possible solution, the development of unique and innovative unmanned sensor system capable of long-endurance, and non-traditional intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (NTISR). DRA is developing a power harvesting enabled UAS capable of carrying a variety of payloads and fulfilling a variety of layered sensing mission requirements. By providing a UAS platform with a self-refueling capability that utilizes available power sources (overhead power lines) for recharging this new class of UAS will present a unique technical solution for persistent ISR vehicles. DRA’s UAS will perform C2ISR-type missions providing virtually unlimited persistence. These new UAS platforms could operate in any environment for a nearly indefinite amount of time with little to no “return-to-base” cycles required and would provide “An Unblinking Eye all of the Way to the Ground!”