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Northrop Grumman Demos Low-Cost Autonomous Control System For Recon Planes
Northrop Grumman Corporation has successfully shown how its low-cost, autonomous control system can manage a variety of U.S. Army reconnaissance aircraft to deliver timely information about enemy positions to troops on the ground. Northrop Grumman is developing the "HURT" system in a program managed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory serves as the technical and contracting agent.
HURT, which stands for Heterogeneous Unmanned Reconnaissance Team, allows ground forces to receive video surveillance imagery of the surrounding area and request specific information about suspected enemy positions on user-friendly touch screens. The system autonomously processes multiple requests and directs the most suitable aircraft to take a closer look.
The latest exercise -- the third demonstration of the HURT system's capabilities -- was conducted April 9-24, 2007, at Fort Hunter Liggett, an Army training installation near King City, Calif. Northrop Grumman showed how HURT can control combinations of manned and unmanned aircraft already in the service inventory to send essential tactical data in real time to soldiers equipped with handheld computers.
The demonstration was performed with the cooperation of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. Some aircraft were supplied by the Army's Aviation and Missile Command. Other key members of the HURT demonstration team include AeroVironment, Dynamic Aviation, Honeywell Laboratories, Insitu Inc., Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Sarnoff Corporation and Teknowledge Corporation.
