With a demonstrated history of success and more than 650,000 total flight hours accumulated, Textron Systems‘ Aerosonde® Uncrewed Aircraft System (UAS) is a game-changer for both land- and sea-based operations.
It is a proven aircraft, with true multi-mission capabilities, that offers day and night full motion video, wide area search, synthetic aperture radar (SAR), communications relay, Automatic Identification System (AIS) interrogation and signals intelligence options. The Aerosonde is equipped to meet a wide variety of mission requirements in a single sortie.
The Aerosonde UAS provides immense capability while maintaining a small footprint, providing you the flexibility you need, wherever your mission may take you. Currently contracted to support seven U.S. Navy ships, the Aerosonde has proven to seamlessly integrate with DoD vessels and is actively supporting Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), Expeditionary Sea Base (ESB) shipboards and Guided Missile Destroyers (DDGs). Building on the existing capabilities of these vessels, the Aerosonde is enabling expanded missions sets, providing mission overwatch and enhanced ISR services with multi-INT capabilities.
Kyle, Senior Program Manager, said; “We’ve designed and built our systems to rapidly adapt to a wide variety of payloads and sensor kits that can be flown simultaneously, so the Navy really does get a flexible, high value ISR capability to further improve maritime domain awareness.
“Being able to search, ID, and track targets of interest with both optics and RF technologies is a powerful enabler when surveilling the high seas.”
Kyle added; “The Navy is a very dynamic organization with very dynamic requirements. Ships are in and out of ports all the time across the world, so being able to flex to real-time mission changes while maintaining high reliability and system readiness is a critical component for operational success.”
The company’s Aerosonde Hybrid Quad (HQ) UAS—built upon its proven Aerosonde fixed-wing platform—boasts an even smaller equipment footprint, enabled by its vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) capability. With no need for launch and recovery equipment, the Aerosonde HQ is the perfect fit for your maritime and on-the-move missions.
Through its participation in UNITAS 2023—an international naval exercise where the system operated off the USNS Burlington—and a U.S. Navy hybrid fleet event last year, which involved cross-domain operations with an Uncrewed Service Vehicle (USV), the Aerosonde HQ has demonstrated the benefits it can bring to maritime missions. Combined with the system’s proven performance and benchmark-setting reliability, the Aerosonde HQ brings unparalleled levels of mission capability and flexibility.
