AAI Completes Navy Fee-for-Service Operations With Aerosonde Unmanned Aircraft Vehicle (UAV)

Gary Mortimer

AAI Unmanned Aircraft Systems, an operating unit of Textron Systems, a Textron Inc. (NYSE: TXT) company, announced today that the company has completed a fee-for-service operation on behalf of the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Dahlgren Division. NSWC Dahlgren has been chartered to conduct UAV flights in conjunction with tests of various types of ground radars and capture and analyze those results. AAI provided its experienced operators in a fee-for-service based arrangement using the Aerosonde UAV in support of those operations.

The Aerosonde Mark 4 series UAV performed this maritime mission profile by conducting pre-programmed flights over water at altitudes of only a few hundred feet at more than 20 miles from shore. The Aerosonde crew used a satellite system in conducting this beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) operation.

“Our team has years of BLOS experience, gaining notoriety by flying a similar maritime mission in support of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2007 where the Aerosonde flew for seven hours inside Hurricane Noel as part of its 17 hour flight,” said AAI Division Vice President of Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Stephen Flach. “Our skilled operators and maintainers supported the eight-hour NSWC mission flights flawlessly which is a testament to the caliber of the flight crew AAI employs.”