Finmeccanica‘s Alenia Aeronautica recently announced its unmanned technology demonstrator, Sky-Y, has completed in March its first series of tests in Italy after five missions.
ENAC, Ente Nazionale per l’Aviazione Civile (National Agency for the Civil Aviation), granted a permit to fly to Sky-Y for the Italian missions.
Including the tests in Italy, Sky-Y accumulated three test phases, two in Sweden and one in Italy.
Sky-Y is the only European-made unmanned vehicle to make flight tests and the only one equipped with European sensors and production systems.
The tests examined some of the automatic functions of ground surveillance mission systems, key to fully assess the operational capabilities of the production machines that will be used for this role in the future.
In particular, the test campaign continued tests on the SELEX Galileo EOST-45 electro-optical sensor, begun in the fall of 2008 in Sweden, and on the real-time data transmission via satellite.
The Telespazio satellite link was used to test real-time data and images transmission with the Civil Defence Agency, during missions which simulated ground surveillance, fire control, detection and monitoring of boats’ and crafts’ traffic and of signaling of possible shipwrecked people.
The recent tests in Italy also examined the functions of the advanced management of the EOST-45 sensor through an on board mission computer (OBMC) provided with software developed by Alenia Aeronautica. Among the functions are: target’s automatic tracking, automatic scan of predefined areas, definition of the geographical coordinates of the surface target under observation, on land and also, for the first time, on sea.
With these tests Alenia Aeronautica consolidates its continental leadership in the technological and operational testing of unmanned aircraft, the company said.
Alenia’s UAV technological demonstrator has made 48 flights so far, 29 conducted by the Sky-X and 19 by the Sky-Y.