UAV - K-Max skal hjem og trene på nye ting

Story of the Week

K-Max Returns From Afghanistan With More Trials
The U.S. Army will test Kaman’s K-Max unmanned coaxial helicopter in two trials over the coming months, said Terry Fogarty, general manager of Kaman Aerospace’s UAS product group, speaking at Farnborough Airshow.
The first autonomous technologies trial will take place next week (end of July) at Fort Benning, Ga., with the U.S. Army’s Aviation Applied Technology Directorate (AATD). Although there have been prior demonstrations of the K-Max’s capability, this exercise, conducted through technology lead Lockheed Martin, will show that the aircraft can autonomously locate and hook-up to its cargo, then return it to another location (called autonomous retrograde capability).





USMC pilot walking away from the unmanned K-Max operating in Afghanistan. The sole remaining aircraft (there were two but one crashed) was withdrawn in July this year. Photo courtesy USMC/DoD

A second trial, to be conducted around the second week of August, will see the unmanned K-Max deploy then collect a Lockheed squad mission support system (SMSS), an unmanned ground vehicle. “Simply put, it’s a robot moving a robot,” said Fogerty, although he emphasized the UAS technology involved in both systems was far in advance of that description. Two days of practice would precede the actual test.

The K-Max that had been operating with the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) in Afghanistan in an un-manned cargo role for around three years left the country in early July.