US Navy carrier ground control station conducts ‘first live control of a UAV’

GA-ASI, the USN and Lockheed Martin have used the navy’s MD-5 Unmanned Carrier Aviation Mission Control Station (UMCS) for the first time to control GA-ASI’s MQ-20 Avenger UAS using Lockheed Martin’s MDCX autonomy platform.

This flight was the first time a GA-ASI UAS completed bi-directional communications using the UMCS operation codes while performing autonomous behaviour.

The effort saw the platform perform commanded autonomy manoeuvres using a proliferated low-earth orbit (PLEO) datalink.

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The USN’s Unmanned Carrier Aviation programme office PMA-268 used MQ-20 as a surrogate to demonstrate how its UMCS can command a variety of unmanned aircraft.

The MD-5 GCS was operated from the USN’s test facility at Patuxent River, Maryland, while the MQ-20 was flown out of GA-ASI’s Desert Horizon flight operations facility in El Mirage, California.

The demonstration was part of an effort to advance technology for future Collaborative Combat Aircraft and was designed to demonstrate connectivity between the Navy’s UMCS and GA-ASI’s MQ-20 Avenger.

The USN will refine the UMCS's requirements based on data from the demonstration and conduct further flight tests to advance command and control technologies, autonomy and crewed-uncrewed teaming.

MQ-25 air vehicle pilot Lt Steven Wilster described the successful flight as a “huge step for unmanned naval aviation”.

“This demonstration showcased UMCS's first live control of a UAV and [paves] the way for integrating critical unmanned capability across the joint force to combat the high-end threat our warfighters face today and in the future,” Wilster said.

Related Equipment in Defence Insight

MQ-20 Avenger