By Geoff Fein
Raytheon [RTN] has successfully demonstrated the ability to recover its KillerBee unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) into a moving net, a significant step toward sea-based operations, a company official said.
“We put together a methodical approach to be able to operate in a high sea state environment,” Ryan Hartman, director of unmanned air systems, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
“The first step of that is to show the ability to navigate the KillerBee anonymously into a net that is moving in multiple axes and do so successfully,” he added.
The demonstration is a step toward the maturation process Raytheon has been going through over the last several years, Hartman said.
“We’ve demonstrated the speed of KillerBee, the ability to fly at high altitudes, the ability to operate in a combat environment using the customer’s C4I systems, and now we have gone out and demonstrated the ability to recover into a moving net,” he said. “It’s just another milestone the KillerBee has achieved towards our goal of meeting all our requirements, or exceeding all our requirements, for STUAS Tier II.”
Raytheon is planning to bid its KillerBee UAV for the Navy’s Small Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System (STUAS)/Tier II effort.
The STUAS/Tier II request for proposals (RFP) was published last month.
Additionally, under the STUAS TIER II competition, the Navy is looking for a mature UAV that could possibly be deployed earlier than a normal development program (Defense Daily, April 13).
Raytheon conducted the recovery test at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. According to Hartman, the company built a test fixture that emulates a moving net.
The company expects to do a sea-based demonstration soon, he added.
“It’s not required we do that prior to submitting a proposal, but surely over the next several months or so we will get into the next level of testing…either with the Navy or with other customers,” Hartman said.
The Navy’s requirement calls for STUAS to be launched and recovered from both ship- and land-based systems. Hartman noted there is a lot of commonality between the sea- and land-based systems.
“It reduces the government’s logistical cost and total ownership cost to have commonality between both of those systems,” he said. “There is very, very little that’s not common between the two. What’s not common is based on requirements the Navy has put into their RFP.”
Raytheon is using a launch system that’s common to other air vehicles in the Marine Corps and Army inventory, Hartman added.
“When we looked at logistical footprint and total ownership cost, it didn’t make a lot of sense to introduce a new launcher to the Marine Corps-Navy inventory,” he said. “So we looked at what they had today and adapted the KillerBee to use what they have today.”
Unlike some of the other UAS in use today, Hartman pointed out that the KillerBee doesn’t use a cable recovery system.
A net recovery system provides two axes, whereas a cable recovery only gives a margin in the vertical axis, and some in the horizontal, but not a lot, he explained.
“Whereas we have margin in the horizontal and vertical axes for recovery. That makes the probability of recovery into a ship, that is heaving and rolling…the net gives us more than enough margin to ensure high probability of capture, exceeding the customer’s requirements,” Hartman said. “I can’t imagine a cable recovery would be able to do the same thing.”
In addition to that, Hartman added, are issues with the energies that are introduced in recovering a UAV. “[If] you look at a cable [recovery], you are requiring the air vehicle to absorb the impact and energy on a very small portion of the air vehicle.”
“If the cable is a half-inch thick, you are requiring the air vehicle to absorb all of that energy in a very small half-inch area,” he said. “Whereas [with] the net recovery, you are distributing the recovery energy across the entire air vehicle itself. So when you look at KillerBee, you are absorbing throughout the entire body, so it’s a very nice synergy between the air vehicle and the net recovery system.”
The Navy variant of KillerBee includes a ground control station, three air vehicles and one launch and recovery element, Hartman added. For the Marine Corps, it’s four air vehicles with two ground control stations, along with the launch and recovery system, he said.
Hartman added Raytheon is looking at opportunities globally for KillerBee. “There are other U.S. government opportunities as well, but right now our focus is on STUAS/Tier II.”
“I think STUAS/Tier II represents the first real program of record for the Tier II market,” Hartman said.