By Geoff Fein
The Navy this week signed a $65 million production contract with Honeywell [HON] for 90 of its T-Hawk micro air vehicle systems that will be used by explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) teams in theater, according to Navy officials.
What T-Hawk brings for EOD is the ability to get a view of an EOD incident from a perspective other than that of a ground robotic system, Brian Anderson, EOD program analyst with the Joint EOD/Crew program office at Indian Head, Md., told Defense Daily earlier this week.
“We have remote systems in use worldwide already and sometimes the ground robot with its limited horizontal look…you don’t get the perspective that you do with another set of eyes from higher altitude or higher [perch] above the incident site,” Anderson said. “And there are some places robotic systems can’t get to because of debris in the road.”
A hovering unmanned aerial system (UAS) will provide the kind of a stable platform that can pretty much be positioned in one place for a period of time to provide that second set of eyes useful for EOD response, he added.
PMA-263, the Small Tactical UAS program office, buys all the UAS systems for the Navy and Marine Corps. However, since T-Hawk is EOD unique equipment, PMA-263 engaged with the EOD office to support this effort, said Lt. Col. James Roudebush, Navy Tier 1 UAS Integrated Product Team lead.
Roudebush added there have been no other queries regarding T-Hawk.
“Right now we have not had any interest from other units with the Navy or Marine Corps for this system,” he said. “The impedes for the initial effort was to support EOD.”
EOD is not using any hovering UAS right now in mass, Anderson added. “[T-Hawk] will represent the first big push to have an EOD unique system, designed toward EOD capabilities in the UAS world.”
T-Hawk was designed to be backpackable, according to Honeywell, and is equipped with a small video camera that relays information back to soldiers using a portable handheld terminal.
T-Hawk is the result of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) effort for operational air vehicles, Roudebush said. The program had two sizes: A class I and a class II, with class two being the larger system.
“[DARPA held a ] competition between two [class I] vendors to develop a backpackable vertical takeoff UAS,” he said.
Honeywell won that competition, Roudebush said.
The original effort was called the GMAV or Gasoline Micro Air Vehicle., he added. “So the GMAV, which is now called T-Hawk, was the winner out of that effort.”
“It’s a good news success story for DARPA because a lot of times they come up with these good little capabilities and ideas that never make their way to the user en mass,” Roudebush said. “They go out of their way to get more of their projects turned over to a kind of a program office to manage. So this is one of those success stories for DARPA.”
Honeywell has deployed systems to Iraq, and noted that those were the first time a ducted-fan UAV has been used during combat missions.
T-Hawk is the latest in a series of design efforts and the latest design, Anderson noted. “Any system over there now is an earlier design…same basic capabilities…they can hover and you can use a camera to zoom in, and fly at whatever altitude is necessary for that military units application.
“Obviously if you have a stable camera in the sky that I can control remotely and it can hover, I can pretty much point it in the direction I want to look and get a picture of whatever the target of interest is,” Anderson added. “So for non EOD, it might be something relating to security or an accident. For EOD, we are mostly concerned with unexploded ordnance…rendering safe neutralization.”
The Army is looking at procuring T-Hawks for their engineer battalions, Roudebush said.
“We have interested partners in the international realm. The U.K. has expressed interest in procuring systems,” he added. “[We] haven’t heard any solid leads on other international partners right now.”
EOD units will operate T-Hawk themselves. Honeywell will train the operators who will be flying T-Hawk.
The Navy runs the jointly staffed EOD school that all four services use, Anderson said. However, the school won’t be offering training for T-Hawk.
That is because T-Hawk is filling an urgent need requirement, he added.
While Honeywell representatives will not accompany EOD units using T-Hawk, there will be both remote system trained material supporters as well as vendor filed service representatives on hand, Anderson said.
“We will be utilizing a combination of the military for inventory control point purposes and then the vendor themselves at depot repair facilities, if needed,” he added. “We will preposition vendor support where needed to provide remote logistics support.”
T-Hawk weighs 17 pounds and is 14 inches in diameter, according to Honeywell. It can deliver more than 40 minutes of flight endurance, more than 40 knots of airspeed and operate at altitudes greater than 7,000 feet, the company added.
Each T-Hawk system consists of two of the micro air vehicles and one ground control unit, Hardware deliveries of the system will begin in the second quarter of ’09 and conclude in December ’09, Honeywell added.