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JANE'S DEFENCE WEEKLY (JDW)
July 8, 2005 v.042 no. 028
Section Heading: HEADLINES
By: MICHAEL SIRAK JDW Staff Reporter\Baltimore, Maryland
The Guided Dispenser System would allow medium-sized
UAVs to deliver supplies and weapons precisely from high altitudes.
Tests of the dispenser have taken place on the US Army's RQ-5
Hunter UAV and are set to continue through 2005. The US Air
Force (USAF) is evaluating a standardised dispenser system
that could be mounted on medium-sized unma-nned aerial vehicles
(UAVs) to precisely deliver supplies and weapons.
The service's UAV Battlelab is leading the
effort to integrate Textron Systems' Guided Dispenser System,
onto unmanned platforms like the US Army's RQ-5 Hunter and
the air force's own MQ-1 and MQ-9 Predators. It could also
be carried on UAVs like the RQ-8 Firescout and the army's
future Extended-Range/Multi-Purpose platform, air force and
industry sources told JDW at the Association for Unmanned
Vehicle Systems International 2005 North American Conference.
On its release from the host platform, the GPS guidance- aided
Guided Dispenser System manoeuvres itself to pre-programmed
co-ordinates via control fins, which also corrects for wind
drift, and then deploys its contents via a piston ejection
system.
The dispenser can carry lethal weapons such
as Textron Systems 64 lb (29 kg) BLU-108 anti-armour submunition;
the similarly sized Clean Lightweight Area Weapon (CLAW) an
anti-personnel system the company designed specifically for
carriage on UAVs; and Northrop Grumman's Viper Strike, said
Richard Sterchele, manager of Textron's strike weapons business
development.
It could also carry non-lethal payloads such
as unattended ground sensors, naval sonobuoys, decoys and
leaflets for psychological operations as well supplies like
food, ammunition and medical items, according to the air force
and industry officials.
Already the battlelab has flown the dispenser
on the Hunter and released a BLU-108 in an inert drop test.
Live tests of a BLU-108 released at higher altitudes off the
Hunter are planned for the next few months, the officials
said. Colonel Larry Felder, commander of the UAV Battlelab,
said he also intends to test the dispenser off a Predator,
either an MQ-1 or MQ-9. Sterchele said the dispenser will
enable the UAVs to deliver their payloads from high altitudes.
Secondly, he said, the dispenser can easily
and affordably be integrated across a range of UAVs once the
engineering work has been accomplished for the initial host
platform.
"You pay the bill once," he told
JDW on 29 June.
Col Felder said the impetus of the project
was the desire of special forces to use UAVs as a means of
precision resupply during operations in forward-deployed areas.
The dispenser project is one of 13 unclassified
initiatives the UAV Battlelab has under way to increase the
effectiveness of unmanned aircraft in the near term.
Among its other weapons activities, said
Col Felder, is a project to integrate the small 5 lb Spike
missile designed by the US Navy onto smaller-sized UAVs. With
it, these UAVs could deliver precision strikes to support
ground troops fighting in confined urban areas. Industry sources
said a potential host platform for Spike flight evaluations
is DRS's Sentry High Performance UAV, from which the battlelab
dropped BLU-108s in tests in 2004. Textron Systems has additional
concepts for integrating weapons on smaller sized UAVs that
are too light to carry the BLU-108 and CLAW. It is offering
the 10 lb Selectively Targeted Skeet (STS) for use on UAVs
in the size class of the army's RQ-7 Shadow and US Navy's
RQ-2 Pioneer.
The STS features the same guided skeet munition
resident in the BLU-108 with the addition of a samara wing.
The company even has a concept to mount an STS on the bottom
of a small, ducted-fan UAV, said Sterchele.
Other companies are also offering carriage
and weapon systems for UAVs. Stara Technologies of the US,
for example, is marketing a guided parafoil delivery system
for supplying blood packets, money, cell phones and communications
equipment to front-line troops. A smaller variant is optimised
to carry on the STS, according to a company representative.
EDO , meanwhile, is offering the Sabre ultralight
weapons and payload carriage for UAVs like the Predator.
Alliant Techsystems is also designing smaller
warheads for weapons conceived for carriage on UAVs.
EDO plans further development of Sabre weapons
carriage.
(jdw.janes.com, 13/06/05)
Reproduced with Permission from Jane's
Information Group - Jane's Defence Weekly
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