Unmanned Airship Solutions for Integrated ISR and Communications Systems
Abstract: Over the past decade the development, production and deployment of Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV) has blossomed into a global phenomenon for electronic systems platforms and delivery systems. The wide range of capabilities and increased efficiencies provided by UAVs positions them for enormous impact on national security, border protection, communications enhancement and surveillance missions throughout the world.
Airships, or “lighter-than-air” (LTA) vehicles,represent a special category of UAVs and can significantly further the effectiveness of UAV applications. This paper outlines the advantages of airship UAV's, the operational and mission capabilities along with a generic concept of operations which may be tailored to the needs of the host nation. UAV airships can support a broad range of missions pertinent to national ministries of defense, agriculture, interior, along with numerous civil government concerns.
Scope
Unmanned air vehicles operate in diverse environments, in high risk roles, including but not limited to: Border patrol, surveillance, reconnaissance, and national defense, atmospheric research(including weather and atmospheric gas sampling), scientific research,oceanographic research, geophysical research, mineral exploration, imaging spectrometry, telecommunications relay platforms, police surveillance, survey and inspection of remote power lines and pipelines, traffic and accident surveillance, emergency and disaster monitoring, cartography and mapping, search and rescue, agricultural spraying, aerial photography, promotion and advertising, weather reconnaissance, flight research, and fire fighting monitoring and management. Unmanned air vehicles are not constrained by human limitations and requirements. They make it possible to gather information in dangerous environments without riskto flight crews and can be much more cost effective than manned aircraft operations. Although recurring costs to repair or replace those damaged during flight can be very high for conventional, heavier-than-air (HTA) UAVs, airships can in fact bring significant cost reductions to this concern in the UAV industry. With the spectrum of missions supported by UAVs the airborne platforms must bring the improved operational capability to support the varied demands.Several of those areas where improvements are being sought are increased mission endurance, large payload capacity, true station-keeping, simplified maintenance and reduction in operating costs. Airships provide an impressive combination of substantial improvements in all of these aspects of UAV operations.
The operational characteristics of our airship system solution are:
-Airships fitted for military/civil aviation communications, control and IFF
-Airship fleet with fully equipped with ISR+Comm capability
-Electro-mechanical interfaces for complementary payload integration
-Onboard power available to support high demand payloads
-Mission endurance and airship regeneration for persistent regional coverage
-Autonomous flight via SATCOM
-Data relay to receiver nodes for real time data processing
-Simultaneous command and control of multiple airships (up to 9)
-Mobile or fixed command and control site(s)
-User friendly mission planning and in-flight re-planning
-Highly variable mission profiles (station-keeping, racetrack, point-to-point)
-Minimal operations personnel
-Airship launch and recovery system requiring small ground crew
-Streamlined maintenance and airship regeneration process
The air ship fleet is capable of supporting terrestrial border protection as well as maritime
surveillance/reconnaissance.Special targets of interest may be supported through the use of airship surveillance such as high valued assets, pipeline facilities or logistics operations. The airships are designed to allow for operational flexibility. The mission needs and operational concept will greatly determine the particular configuration of the individual airships and the overall fleet delivered
System Description
The result of our design considerations is an airship called SkySat. The SkySat isan Unmanned Air Vehicle System (UAV) which supports both tactical and strategic missions. Because of the rich heritage of the airship concept, the stability of the platform, unmatched mission endurance, flexibility in performance and relative simplicity in design, the SkySat brings all the advantages of mission variety, complete sensor compatibility and cost effectiveness to our customers.Proven off-the-shelf technologies combined with the ingenuity of world-renowned airship designers, provide the basis for robust intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and communications mission assurance through aircraft surviv ability, system reliability and low cost maintainability.It is clear from discussion with representatives from over 20 nations throughout the world that this product is well-equipped to support the intended missions throughout the world.
Command and Control
The command and control suite employs the latest in remotely piloting technology.It supports multiple-vehicle control of up to 9 vehicles by a single operator depending on tasking level. This subsystem provides for:
• Variable levels of autonomous operations
• Real-time mission editing
• Simplified manual control interface
• Payload control interface
• High rate data logging and parsing for analysis
Specific capabilities which enhance the compatibility with the above mentioned missions are:
• Multi–layered communications software package that enables multi-vehicleIP–based messaging (TCP/IP, UDP) over line-of-sight(LOS) or beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS*) communication channels.
• 802.11b line–of–sight (LOS) communications capability that provides for optional external signal amplification.
• Four serial communication ports that are used for the optional BLOS satellite modems.
• Upto four satellite modems can be used simultaneously to increase the BLOS data bandwidth.
• Transmit digital video over the 802.11b LOS link or optional BLOS link.
• Data routing to multiple receiving stations.
Mission Planning
The mission planning is accomplished through a simple control panel , even for the most
complex missions. Some of the specific capabilities of this subsystem are:
• Single operator command and control of multiple vehicles with minimal training
• Display vehicle status and current mission profile
• Decompress and display JPEG 2000 video
• Support real-time route editing
• Display cautions, alerts and warnings for low fuel, system malfunctions and other messages
• Update maps in common bitmap format
• More video features to allow recording of the entire mission, playback, pause,etc.
• Runs on a PC or notebook computer and is hardware and UAV-platform independent.
Flight Control
This flight control subsystem is off-the-shelf and proven not only for heavier-than-air UAVsit has been upgraded for use on airships as well. In order to effectively support the specialized sensors and communications payloads flexibility in capability and precision inflight control is essential. The flight control computer allows for variable levels of control autonomy from direct control from the pilot surface-to air,control through SATCOM or autonomous airship flight with pre programmed profiles or auto return-to-base in the event of an emergency. In addition the following capabilities bring a robust flight control to our airship solution:
• 3-D way point navigation
• Sensor slave
• Loiter patterns
• Remote directional steering
• Pre programmed maneuvers
• High-precision flight path control
– Heading 3 deg (1 sigma)
– Pitch 1 deg (1 sigma)
– Roll 1 deg (1 sigma)
– Velocity 0.6 meters per second (1 sigma)
– Altitude 3.1 meters/10 ft (1 sigma)
– Latitude/Longitude 4 meters/13 ft (non-differential)
• Real-time flight path reprogramming
• Sensor control capability
• TCP/IP & UDP/IP network-centric communications
• Integrated GPS/INS
Conclusion
Airships integrated with the recent technology advances will support a large variety of critical missions at various levels of governmental and business concern throughout the world. The capabilities which airships bring will no doubt fill an important role in complementing integrated national data gathering systems in support of senior leader decision-making responsibilities. Both the economics and the operational value associated with this renewed deployment of lighter-than-air vehicles must be leveraged to bring about the next generation of aerial coverage...
