Parvus Corp. announced Aug. 11 the successful first flight of the Aurora Common Mission Computer (ACMC) units onboard the Excalibur–a new tactical unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) designed to combine high speed and vertical flight using unique turbine hybrid electric propulsion.
The ACMC is part of Aurora Common Avionics Components and the Excalibur Air Vehicle flew with two units. Jean-Marie Bourven, Aurora ACMC Product Manager, said, “The ACMC key considerations were to use industry standards to support long term system evolution and reliability.”
The ACMC computer is a small-form factor rugged computing system based on Parvus’ COTS DuraCOR 820 subsystem, designed to accommodate the environmental and physical requirements of Aurora’s airborne vehicles. The computing architecture for this Parvus subsystem is based on a low-power mobile Pentium CPU, solid state memory, Linux operating system, military-grade power supply, and various peripheral and network inputs.
“Parvus has a long history of successfully supplying key military contractors, such as Aurora, with advanced MIL-grade Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) computing solutions tailored to specific UAV platforms,” said Les Goodman, president of Parvus Corporation. “The Excalibur will prove to be a valuable aircraft to the military’s arsenal of UAVs and Parvus is honored to participate in this important program.”
Excalibur’s unique configuration enables both VTOL and high-speed flight modes at speeds up to 400 knots; thereby providing the Warfighter with a survivable capability for quick response weapons delivery or logistics resupply from remote, austere forward operating bases or from air cable ships operating in the littorals.
Excalibur is the third program from Aurora to use the ACMC units from Parvus. Aurora’s other tactical systems operating with these customized systems include GoldenEye 80.