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Prender said there are several ways to expand today\u2019s operations, if the Navy chooses to do so. First, he said, he hoped that the successful deployment on Pacific destroyers would encourage the Navy to expand to more ships and more ship classes. The contract could even be set up so that a certain number of Aerosonde UAVs and Textron teams move from one ship to another, based on mission needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Second, he said, Textron or third-party vendors could develop additional payloads. Textron today uses the ISR and wide area search payloads as well as an automatic identification system tracker payload off Navy ships. The Aerosonde also uses a lidar and a synthetic aperture radar payload in support of European Maritime Safety Agency missions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Others could be developed for areas including communications relay, allowing for an unmanned-unmanned teaming opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Textron also makes a Common Unmanned Surface Vehicle as part of the Navy\u2019s mine countermeasures mission package for the Littoral Combat Ship program. The CUSV is limited in range by its line-of-sight communications with the LCS, Prender said, but using an Aerosonde UAV as a communications relay could untether the USV from the manned ship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAs we start to expand the footprint of our unmanned aircraft systems in the Navy, and that starts to overlap with the unmanned surface vehicle footprint that the Navy is employing, you can start to stitch those two together and, with a simple data link relay, which we\u2019ve demonstrated, you can extend the reach of the Common Unmanned Surface Vehicle beyond its limited LCS line-of-sight range, kind of pushing that CUSV over the horizon. And so that unmanned-unmanned teaming gives the CUSV greater standoff range. It also provides an eye in the sky where you can do interrogation of potential targets and threats and then allow the CUSV to take action on those assets, whether it be in a mine countermeasure mission, a surface warfare mission or search and rescue mission. So we\u2019re definitely excited about seeing the potential growth of unmanned surface and unmanned aircraft systems throughout the Navy as the footprint starts to expand,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prender said the company would be working to get the second Pacific-based destroyer ready to employ the Aerosonde later this year, as well as using the first deployed system to support Navy exercises and experimentation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two 7th Fleet-based destroyers that don’t have their own helicopters will get to leverage Textron UAVs instead, to give the ships an organic air search capability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":114750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":16,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[160,29,16,93,36],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3354],"class_list":["post-55479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-digital-show-dailies","category-naval","category-navy-league","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"E63KWZTPRBC4NCLZAPP7XSZDL4","arc_canonical_url":"\/naval\/2022\/04\/06\/textron-drone-deployed-on-navy-destroyer-as-contractor-operated-isr-node\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n