Sierra Technical Services (STS), a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) design, manufacturing and testing specialist, has announced that it has completed engine run testing on the 5th Generation Aerial Target (5GAT), a high-performance unmanned fighter-size drone that is designed to simulate representative threat aircraft for U.S. armed forces air-to-air and surface-to-air weapons evaluation, pilot training, and ground forces training.
Having previously acted as a subject matter expert to the U.S. Department of Defense during the design phase of the 5GAT, STS was awarded a Prime Contract by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers Contracting Office (USACE) to design, manufacture, assemble, integrate and ground/flight test the 5GAT Demonstrator. The first test flight of the demonstrator is scheduled to take place in the near future.
Roger Hayes, President and CEO of STS, commented: “This is an exciting day and major milestone achievement with the completion of these Engine Run Tests leading up to our flight test phase expected in the 1st quarter of 2020. I am extremely proud of our very small and dedicated 5GAT Team. This is a major step forward to providing our warfighters an attritable, low-cost, high-performance, full-scale, 5th Generation Aerial Target that can be also be used by the Department of Defense (DoD) for other emerging projects such as NGAT, Loyal Wingman, and Sky Borg.”
