UAV - Norge må melde seg på for å få innsikt

NATO User Group for Reaper UAVs Established

AIN DEFENSE PERSPECTIVE » OCTOBER 10, 2014

by  CHRIS POCOCK

The Italian air force was the first European customer for the Predator/Reaper series of UAVs, and may host a common training facility. (Photo: Italian Ministry of Defence)

October 9, 2014, 9:45 AM

A NATO Members User Group for the GA-ASIMQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is being established. According to Frank Pace, president of GA-ASI, it will provide a forum for new European Reaper operators to understandU.S. tactics, techniques and procedures, and to arrange mutually beneficial support solutions. The UK and France already operate Reapers, and the Netherlands will buy four, according to Pace. Germany remains a potential customer, he added, although it might wait for the certifiable Predator B. This version of the Reaper is on schedule to fly in late 2016, Pace added.

“Their buys are not big numbers, so it makes sense for the Europeans to achieve some commonality,” Pace told AIN. GA-ASI is recommending that a depot for the Reaper’sTPE331 turboprop engines be set up in Germany, where maker Honeywell already operates an overhaul facility. For training, GA-ASI is recommending Italy, where there are less airspace restrictions in force for UAV operations. The Italian air force was GA-ASI’s first customer in Europe. It has acquired MQ-1 Predators, but not larger Reapers.

During NATO exercise Unified Vision last May, GA-ASI demonstrated the integration of sensor data from the Reaper with NATO ISR networks. A manned Beechcraft King Air 350 was used as the UAV surrogate, carrying a GA-ASI Lynx multimode radar, a FLIRStar Safire 3800HD EO/IR sensor, Link 16, and the L-3Com tactical common datalink.GA-ASI said that its payload management software named Claw provided coordinated command and control of the payloads. The company’s System for Tactical Archival, Retrieval and Exploitation (STARE) software shared and rebroadcast the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data across multiple levels of security to the NATOpartners, it added.