HISTORY and DEVELOPMENT
In 2000, Insitu announced the development of the SeaScan UAV naval unmanned aerial vehicle to be used for ship launch and recovery. The SeaScan can operate in naval platform from 20 ft-long patrol boats to large naval vessels. In 2002, Boeing made a collaborative agreement with the Insitu in the development of ScanEagle UAV.
In 2002, ScanEagle successfully completed its first autonomously controlled flight. The ScanEagle is a mini unmanned aerial vehicle developed by Boeing and Insitu at the Phantom Works facility. The ScanEagle completed 30,000 combat operational flight hours by the end of the first quarter in 2007, including operations over Iraq. The system operated by different branches of the military including allies. These are the United States Marine Corps, the United States Navy and the Australian Army.
In 2004, USMC deployed two air vehicles in Iraq to supports troops in fighting insurgencies and other terrorism act. In April 2005, the US Navy deployed ScanEagle on-board 15 destroyers and LSD's. In 2006, Australian Army buys a squadron of ScanEagle and used also in Iraq.
In Early 2009, the ScanEagle already made over 1,500 successful shipboard recoveries on NS Navy vessels and passed over 50,000 combat flight hours with the US Marines in Iraq. By the end of 2009, it already deployed on-board Ticonderoga Class Aegis cruisers, US navy assault and dock landing ships.
SCANEAGLE MISSION
ScanEagle primary missions are intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), special services operations, escort operations, sea-lane and convoy protection, protection of high-value and secure installations and high-speed wireless voice, video and data communications relay.
SCANEAGLE DESIGN and SPECIFICATIONS
The ScanEagle aerial vehicle is composed of five modular-replaceable major module which are fuselage, avionics, wings and the propulsion system. The cylindrical fuselage has 200 cm diameter with mid-mounted swept-back wings with winglets, tail end-plate fins and steering rudder. It has a wingspan of 3.1 meters from wing tip to wing tip.
The ScanEagle has a range of 1,500 km and an endurance of 30 hours. It operates at speeds between 80 kilometers per hours and 126 kilometers per hour and the cruise speed is 90 kilometers per hour in level flight. The UAV achieves a maximum rate of climb of 150 meters per minute to a maximum altitude of 4,880 meters or 16,000 feet.
In cold environment operation, the ScanEagle can be equip with carburetor heating and an ice-phobic wing covering. The Turret mounted surveillance and observation systems are mounted in the nose. The nose carries the pilot tube fitted with an anti-precipitation system for cold weather operations.
The UAV is packed into as single storage container with a dimension of 1.71 meters length, 0.45 meters wide and 0.45 meters thick for convenient transportation to the forward operation base.
LAUNCH and RECOVERY SYSTEM
On land or on naval ship operation, the ScanEagle is catapult launched from a pneumatically operated wedge launcher. The recovery system is based on the Sky-hook recovery system developed bu Insitu, originally for Sea-Scan UAV. The retrieval system uses an arresting or snagging line suspended from a 15.2 meters boom.
The UAV is flown directly to approach the snagging line and a hook installed in the air vehicle's wing tip is caught on the line.
PAYLOAD of SCANEAGLE
Payloads are housed in the nose section of the UAV. The sensors installed in the turret allow the operator to track stationary or moving targets without having to re-maneuver the aerial vehicle.
The payloads include electro-optical and infrared sensors, Biological and chemical sensors, laser designators and a magnetometer for identification and locating magnetic anomalies.
The nose also houses a gimbals and inertial stabilized turret. The sensor turret is the DRS E-6000 high resolution thermal imagery module providing 640 x 480 pixels with a 25 micron pitch.
The ScanEagle has an on-board NanoSAR (Synthetic Aperture radar) from ImSAR based in Salem Utah. The NanoSAR weights 2 lb and claims to be the smallest SAR in the world.
SCANEAGLE ENGINE
The ScanEagle is a two-bladed propeller with a pusher engine fitted into the fuselage. The engine delivers 0.97 kilowatt of power. The aerial vehicle carries a maximum 4.3 kilograms of JP5 fuel.
Heavy fuel engines presents problems in cold environments but the JP5 endurance flight was successfully completed in temperatures from -16 degrees Celsius to -6 degrees Celsius.
CONTROL and NAVIGATION
The ground control station can control up to eight UAV with only two operator consoles. Control and Navigation system provides the ScanEagle a way-point navigation using differential GPS navigation, autonomous object tracking and autonomous in-flight route mapping. It is equipped with a Guidance 111 control and navigation sensor supplied by Athena Technologies Incorporated.
The UAV contains solid-state gyros and accelerometer, magnetometer, GPS receiver and air data pressure transducers which provide altitude and heading measurement to high-accuracy. Kalman filtering and GPS magnetometer maintains the high accuracy of measurement during dynamic maneuvering such as sustained high-g turns.
The ScanEagle has a data link at 900 megahertz UHF and a 2.4 Gigahertz S-band downlink for video transmission.
No comments:
Post a Comment