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Boeing?s Unmanned AH-6 in French Navy Study for Rotary UAV
Boeing’s unmanned AH-6 is part of the trial programme being conducted by the French Navy to achieve an onboard UAV capability by 2011. Boeing is one member of a team that includes French state-owned company DCNS and Thales. The brief is to demonstrate ‘autonomous landing and take-off from land and sea.’
Boeing calls its platform the H-6U, which is a derivative of its existing AH-6i manned helicopter.
The French military is looking at how a rotary UAV such as the AH-6 could fit into both naval and army operations, said Fred Jerigan, AH-6 International Capture Team Leader, speaking at the company’s Mesa, Arizona facility recently. ‘The platform would be used for over the horizon search, communications relay and would be required to land on a frigate up to and including sea state 5.’ Another requirement for the naval platform would be that it could fit into a frigate’s hangar alongside an NH-90 helicopter.
Boeing has also been working with the US Marine Corps Warfighter Lab “to develop the concept of operations for higher level company resupply requirements; Enhanced Company Operation Mission – which used to be known as Distributive Operations.”
Jerigan continued, ‘we [worked] to figure out how the mission profile would look and what they could expect from a vertical UAV, what technologies need to be on the aircraft etc. We try to help them understand’ the operational concept.
By Andrew Drwiega, Mesa, Arizona
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