World's First

AeroVironment announced last week the successful completion of flight tests for the world's first liquid hydrogen powered Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). The unmanned High-Altitude Long-Endurance (HALE) aircraft, named Global Observer, is a fifty-foot wingspan prototype to validate the technologies and concept of operations for the system.

"Our dedicated, experienced team has achieved the last major milestone in our HALE UAV technology development," said Tim Conver, AeroVironment's president and chief executive. "We are now ready to quickly satisfy an urgent national security need for an affordable, persistent HALE system for communications relay and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions."

The Global Observer prototype accomplished a successful maiden liquid hydrogen powered flight on May 26 at the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona. It was flown again on June 2 to demonstrate repeatable and reliable performance. The unmanned, fifty-foot wingspan aircraft operated entirely on liquid hydrogen fuel for over one hour on each flight and was flown under both manual control and autonomous waypoint navigation.

Global Observer will be able to operate at 65,000 feet for over a week with a flexible payload-carrying capacity of up to 1,000 pounds. This will provide seamless communication relay and remote sensing systems using only two aircraft in rotation, with one replacing the other on station once per week.

Government and commercial applications will include:

• Persistent, global, near-space loitering capability for defense and homeland security missions
• Low cost, rapidly deployable telecommunications infrastructure and GPS augmentation
• Hurricane/storm tracking, weather monitoring, and wildfire detection/support
• Environmental monitoring, agriculture optimization and aerial imaging/mapping capabilities

In addition to validating the functionality of the airplane and the propulsion system, these flight tests demonstrated safe and efficient hydrogen powered flight and mobile liquid hydrogen fueling operations, the last technology challenge for the Global Observer system. With this completed milestone and adequate funding, AV is confident that a Global Observer system can be deployed for U.S. government applications within two years.

AeroVironment has been operating unmanned high-altitude platforms in the stratosphere for more than a decade and conducted over 50 flight tests on its earlier developmental electric HALE UAVs. Working with NASA, AV broke the world altitude record for all aircraft in level flight by flying an unmanned electric powered aircraft to 96,863 feet-well above the planned 65,000 feet operating altitude of the Global Observer.

AV also demonstrated the world's first use of a UAV system for telecommunications applications from 65,000 feet in collaboration with the Japan Ministry of Post & Telecommunications, with payloads from NEC and Toshiba. These successful demonstrations included high definition television (HDTV) broadcasting and third-generation mobile (3G) voice, video, and data transmissions to an off-the-shelf mobile handset and wireless modem equipped laptop. Multiple commercial remote sensing missions have also been flown.

FMI: www.aerovironment.com