Unmanned Systems Technology 012 | AutoNaut USV | Connectors | Unmanned Ground Vehicles | Cobra Aero A33i | Intel Falcon 8+ UAV | Propellers | CES Show report

16 P icture a naval force operating off a contested coast, with the major warships standing off beyond the horizon while UXVs – the term for unmanned air, surface and subsurface vehicles – build up a picture of activities on the surface and ashore. To do so they sniff out radar and communications signals that might indicate hostile activity, and hunt for submarines and mines in preparation for an amphibious landing, seamlessly feeding the information they gather into the ships’ networked command and control facilities. Bringing that vision closer to reality was the purpose of the Unmanned Warrior trial that took place off the coasts of Wales and the west of Scotland in October 2016 in a successful cooperative effort that involved the Royal Navy, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) and many industry players large and small. Chris Skinner, a Thales systems architect and the company’s technical lead for the Unmanned Warrior event from the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance perspective, provided insight into the practicalities of integrating a diverse set of UXVs into the Autonomous Control Exploitation Realisation (ACER), an experimental command and control system, and getting them to work in a real-world demonstration. The company brought its Watchkeeper tactical UAV, Fulmar X mini-UAV and Halcyon autonomous mine-hunting USV system to Unmanned Warrior. “Essentially, the event was the early days of looking at how you might integrate unmanned systems together, particularly in the airborne, surface and subsurface domains, and ACER really facilitated that,” Skinner says. The idea behind the system is to create a deployable element that can go into future shipboard combat systems and Thales’ technical lead for the Unmanned Warrior naval trial gives Peter Donaldson his perspective on multi-platform integration Team players February/March 2017 | Unmanned Systems Technology A Watchkeeper WK450, whose imagery and radar track feeds were integrated into the Autonomous Control Exploitation Realisation command and control system (Courtesy of Thales)