AAI buys Aerosonde

Australian UAV manufacturer Aerosonde stands to benefit considerably from the market access generated by its new American owner, AAI Corp.
American UAV manufacturer AAI Corp, which was one of the short listed contenders for Joint Project 129, has bought Australia's premier UAV manufacturer, Aerosonde Pty Ltd, for US$6.5 million.

The deal includes Aerosonde North America Inc and will see the Australian firm re-badged as AAI Aerosonde.

"The acquisition of Aerosonde is a perfect fit for our blueprint of strategically expanding our unmanned aircraft systems capabilities to meet the growing and diversified requirements of military, homeland security, and civilian markets," said Steven Reid, AAI's vice president of Unmanned Aircraft Systems.

"Aerosonde's unique capabilities fit very nicely with our own unmanned aircraft technologies as we have recently offered a candidate to meet the US Marine Corps requirements for a Tier II tactical unmanned aircraft system in support of regimental and expeditionary unit operations," Reid added.

The UAV which AAI has offered to the US Marines is a variant of the Aerosonde family of air vehicles. These could eventually be re-designated Shadow 50 and Shadow 100, to conform with the rest of AAI's range of tactical and medium endurance UAVs, the Shadow 200, 400 and 600 models.

AAI was one of the American pioneers in the Tactical UAV sector. It teamed with Israeli firms IAI and Tadiran during the early-1980s to manufacture their Mastiff and Scout UAV under licence for the US Navy and Marines. The company then set up a joint venture with IAI, Pioneer UAV Inc, to manufacture IAI's Pioneer UAV under license in the USA. The Pioneer is still in US Marine Corps service and set for a technology refresh to see it through to 2015.

Currently, AAI's TUAV business turns over some US$480 million a year and employs 2,000 people, of whom some 520 are engineers. Its biggest customer, of course, is the US Army, for whom AAI manufactures the Shadow 200 TUAV which has accumulated over 100,000 flying hours as an Intelligence, Surveillance Reconnaissance (ISR) asset throughout Iraq and Afghanistan.

AAI wants to ride the so-called payload 'technology curve', Reid told ADM in Melbourne. As payloads become lighter and smaller, tasks which once required the internal volume and flight performance of something like the US Army's Shadow 200 TUAV are coming within reach of much smaller air vehicles such as the Aerosonde and Boeing's Scan Eagle. It was the latter's success which prompted AAI to seek out a partner in this market segment and the only other credible player was Aerosonde.

There is a growing number of small (and therefore relatively cheap) UAVs able to carry miniaturised Electro-Optic and Infra red (EO and IR) payloads. One of Aerosonde's unique advantages in this sector is its endurance, a function both of its small size and very efficient engine and aerodynamics. The Aerosonde Mk4, without a payload, has demonstrated an endurance of nearly 40 hours. In tactical configuration it is capable of 24 hour mission endurance, carrying both EO and IR payloads for day and night operations.

The availability of lightweight EO, IR, Electronic Warfare (EW) and communications relay payloads has meant that the Aerosonde family is able now to carry multiple payloads and maintain its mission endurance - and that is two to four times as great as most of the TUAVs in current operational service.

Its other unique advantage is that it is covert: above about 1,500 feet it is inaudible and invisible to the naked eye, unlike current TUAVs which, to varying degrees, can be seen and heard some way off.

Meanwhile, the larger Shadow 200 is now
And the company is contemplating 'weaponisation' by fitting it with lightweight missiles; this and the laser designator will bring the Shadow 200 into the 'kill chain' and expand its operational role beyond its current ISR focus. Other roles which AAI foresees for the Shadow family include airborne communications relay and ground surveillance using an emerging generation of lightweight synthetic aperture radars (SAR).

And according to Aerosonde chairman Peter Smith, in technical terms we may be only half a generation away, or a generation at most, from fielding lightweight laser designators on platforms as small as the Aerosonde.

The purchase of Aerosonde is part of a wider strategy by AAI to secure a great share of the UAV dollar. According to Steve Reid the air vehicles themselves represent only about a quarter of the total cost of a ty
AAI isn't in the payload business, but it has set its sights firmly on the ground control station business. It has developed the One System Ground Control Station (GCS) as a common ground control and exploitation system for the Pentagon's entire range of TUAVs. The One System GCS employs the US Tactical Common Data Link and is NATO Stanag 4586 compliant - so is capable of interfacing with and controlling any other Stanag 4586-compliant UAV system and therefore offers significant interoperability.

The company's plan is to integrate the One System GCS with as many of the Pentagon's current TUAV fleet as possible in order to become a near-ubiquitous command, control and exploitation solution. It wants to see the system integrated with the Pioneer, Shadow, Hunter, Warrior (a Predator derivative), I-Gnat, Eagle Eye and Raven; Aerosonde will naturally follow. And Northrop Grumman has also integrated it with the Fire Scout: the US Marines have ordered seven One System GCSs, complete with the TCDL, to control its own Fire Scout UAVs, while Fire Scout has also been selected as the US Army's Class 4 UAV within its emerging Future Combat System (FCS) construct.

An adjunct to the One System GCS is the Remote Video Terminal (RVT) which enables more operators on the ground to access the data and imagery stream form the TUAV. The RVT fuses together imagery and GIS applications and can also allow the viewers to slew the sensor aboard the TUAV, though not to control the TUAV directly - that would challenge the whole basis on which airspace management is currently conducted when UAVs are airborne.

AAI's advantages from Aerosonde's point of view are access to a large customer base, and close relations with the operators. AAI maintains close contact with the US Army's Aviation Program Executive Office (PEO) at Ft Rucker, Alabama. Here in Australia the ADF's pool of UAV expertise is quite small so the relationships between the industry players and operators are not so well formed.

Nevertheless, Aerosonde has kicked important goals in its relatively short history, and it is these that have caught the eye of its new owner.

By Gregor Ferguson, Adelaide