Milestone Announced At Air Force Association Air And Space Conference

It may not have had the impact, and certainly not the media coverage, of the first flights of the CSeries or 787-9 airliners, but Aurora Flight Sciences announced Tuesday at the Air Force Association Air and Space Conference that the Orion Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) successfully completed its first flight on August 24, 2013.

The flight was conducted on a western test range, lasted three hours and thirty-one minutes, and reached a maximum altitude of 8,000 feet above mean sea level.

On its website, Aurora says the Orion is a "long-endurance, Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) capable of providing extreme persistence for military applications, such as ISR and communication relay. Orion was competitively selected by the US Air Force for the Medium Altitude Global ISR and Communication (MAGIC) Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD). The MAGIC JCTD was sponsored by the US Central Command (CENTCOM) to meet its demand for persistent ISR. In the JCTD ranking process, five Combatant Commands ranked Orion as their number one priority."

The company says the aircraft is able to fly for 5 days with a 1,000 lbs payload at 20,000 feet in altitude and supports multiple intelligence missions simultaneously, including FMV EO/IR sensor, communication relay, cross cueing and payload fusion, WAAS, VADER, and SIGINT options.

Orion is designed to provide over 3 days on station from bases 2,000 miles from the mission, and has the potential to provide strike capability for the warfighter with the ability to carry over 1,000 lbs per wing on hardpoints.

(Image provided by Aurora Flight Sciences)

FMI: www.aurora.aero