The Army’s newest, most portable video terminal for intelligence gathered by the MQ-1C Gray Eagle unmanned aerial vehicle has completed its initial round of operational tests.
An upgraded version of the one-system remote video terminal (OSRVT) recently underwent a month of operational test and evaluation with a Stryker brigade combat team at Edwards AFB, Calif.
While official test results are months away, the system seems to be providing exactly the capabilities Army units need to operate the Gray Eagle in the field, said Col. Thomas von Eschenbach, UAS capability manager for Army Training and Doctrine Command.
“What this OSRVT configuration is doing and how it is doing it is exactly what the Army needs for it to do and as we get it in the hands of soldiers that need it on the battlefield for situational awareness…it’s exactly the capability we require,” he said during a June 9 conference call with reporters.”
When the Gray Eagle underwent initial operational testing, the OSRVT was deemed unreliable by the Pentagon’s director of test and evaluation. That iteration of the system, was a rudimentary version that was statically placed at a tactical operations center and could only receive a video feed from the UAV, an interoperability level of two, according to a graded scale that ranges from 1-5. Interoperability level five give a single system control over both the payload and the vehicle, including during takeoff and landing.
“In this case, it is a capability that is much more mobile, it’s lighter, it’s bi-directional, meaning that the operator can take control of the payload and maneuver the payload,” he said.
Col. Courtney Cote, the Army’s UAS project manager, said the current OSRVT has an interoperability level three during the tests, where the ground control system can control the sensor payload while another controller oversaw flying the aircraft.
The system in earlier configurations already is deployed with units overseas. Recent tests were performed to confirm that the latest iteration is fulfilling the Army’s published requirements for providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance for forward-deployed ground units, Cote said. Each brigade combat team is equipped with 22 mobile terminals, which consist of a radio transceiver, a laptop computer and antennas.
Data was collected on changes made to the system since the initial testing of the Gray Eagle because they have been upgraded from the commercial versions then used, he said. As the system becomes integrated into fielded units, the Army also is focused on transition maintenance of both the aircraft and OSRVT to soldiers rather than contractors.
The goal is to “decrease our reliance on maintenance contractors and ensure our equipment can be 100 percent soldier maintained so that when we do deploy there is not a heavy dependence on contract logistical support,” Eschenbach said. “This is part of the effort, as we mature this system, to get the soldiers trained in all the tasks they would do out in the field.”
OSRVT was part of a pre-planned product improvement effort associated with Gray Eagle that Cote called “natural modernization evolution” of the weapon system.
“At some point when a capability becomes an order of magnitude changed, then you have to go back and do an operational test and make sure it’s still meeting its intended purpose.”
“Just like any weapon system the Army has, tomorrow it won’t be the same weapon system and it won’t be the same weapon system we have today,” Cote said. “If you give someone a weapon, they will find different ways to use it. It has been a natural evolution from the first time it was used to now and next year there will probably be a new evolution of it in some way, shape or form.”
The Army is still in the process of fielding Gray Eagle units. A seventh, eighth and ninth company will be outfitted with the aircraft this year on the way to an eventual 15 equipped unit. The service’s plan is to outfit about two units per year through 2018. Each company is equipped with 12 UAVs.
“We’re on track with where we expected to be, programmatically,” he said.