QinetiQ‘s Zephyr, a solar-powered plane funded jointly by the U.K. Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Pentagon, recently set an unofficial world endurance record for a flight by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), Thales said last week.
Thales provided the flight’s Communication Relay System–a repackaged PRC-148 Joint Tactical Radio System Enhanced Multiband Inter/Intra Team Radios (JEM)–that enabled users, more than 300 miles apart, to communicate using their organic radios during a non-stop, 82-hour and 37-minute flight.
Zephyr is part of a U.K./U.S. Joint Capability Technology Demonstration program designed to rapidly field urgently needed technologies such as battlefield communications and reconnaissance.
For this program, Thales developed, integrated, tested, and provided a relay communications system that would support Single Channel Ground and Radio Airborne System (SINCGARS) capability.
The system consisted of a four-radio solution (PRC-148 JEM) capable of providing two retransmission demonstration systems at less than five pounds including radios, retransmission cables, and antennas, Thales said.
“Our expertise in tactical communications solutions for size, weight and power-constrained environments goes beyond the radio and enables us to provide solutions across a myriad of operational domains, including airborne systems,” Lewis Johnston, vice president of Advanced Programs at Thales Communications, said in a statement. “Our technology has been proven in the low-temperature, high-altitude, long-endurance operational setting where reliability is key.”
The current official UAV endurance record is 30 hours and 21 minutes, set by Northrop Grumman‘s [NOC] RQ-4A Global Hawk in March 2001.
In 2007, Zephyr remained airborne for 54 hours and carried a surveillance payload to a maximum altitude of 58,355 feet during trials the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
The 2007 flight was not an official record because there was no Federation Aeronatique Internationale (FAI) official present. The FAI is the federation for the world’s air sports.
The hand-launched Zephyr is an ultra-lightweight carbon fiber aircraft weighing about 66 pounds but with a nearly 59-foot wingspan. In daytime the Zephyr flies on solar power and recharges lithium-sulphur batteries, which power the aircraft at night.
The recent flight trial was funded by the Pentagon and took place at the U.S. Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, in the harsh conditions of the Sonoran Desert.
Zephyr was flown on autopilot and via satellite communications to a maximum altitude of more than 60,000 feet.