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

18 In conversation | Chris Skinner “We have some virtual machines that we deployed into that environment, and we had some of our test simulators there,” he says. “We had a simulator for the FMV and one for the track management piece, which enabled us to do some early installation and de-risking of the ACER combat management,” he says. While the FMV worked pretty much straight away, the track management element needed a little tweaking of the software coding. “A couple of grammatical errors meant that tracks were in the wrong place,” he says. The team then focused on the benefits that integrating tracks from Watchkeeper could bring to combat management, for example defining those tracks, allocating track numbers to them and determining what sort of data could complement them. “At the same time, there was a strand of development looking at integrating the new maritime radar mode onto the radar that we had for the trial, getting it through our integration labs and then off to do shakedown flights in our West Wales trials area before the event,” Skinner says. “The biggest challenge we faced with this particular element – other than timescales – was the fact that the air vehicle flies off the coast of Wales but the integration happens in Portsmouth. So we did a phased series of integration events, each time testing with various simulators and making sure the interaction with the combat management system was working correctly. “It was only towards the tail end of the process, before the trial, that everything appeared in the right place at the right time.” For the ACER system, the right place was the SD Northern River , a support ship operated by Serco Marine for the Royal Navy. The containerised ACER cabinet was placed aboard the ship about a week before the trial and sailed to Cardigan Bay in Wales for shakedown. “So the first time we were able to fully test the system completely was actually on the first day of the trial,” Skinner says. To support a maritime trial, he adds, you need a plentiful and unobstructed source of AIS traffic, but the West Wales site presented problems on both fronts. AIS is a line-of-sight system, which the team had tested without problems at the Portsmouth site with its clear view of the dockyard and surrounding area. “At the trials facility, we ended up having to elevate our AIS base antennas by about 15 m to get over some line-of- sight obstructions,” Skinner says. A dearth of maritime traffic transmitting AIS signals was another issue that the team had to resolve to provide confidence that the output from the ACER onto the command and control screens reflected what was happening in real time. Building confidence “Until the Northern River turned up with a number of target boats it was very difficult,” Skinner says, although help was forthcoming in the meantime. “One of the range safety boats was able to do a few figure-of-eights for us, which helped build confidence.” In a further confidence-building measure, Thales deployed comms specialists aboard the Northern River to deal with any teething problems, which proved prescient when an issue arose with the satcom system a Boeing team had brought aboard to support Scan Eagle operations planned for its own participation in Unmanned Warrior. The problem was that there was no link between the ship’s compass and the satcom system, without which the system could not correct for the ship’s movements and would therefore be unable to track the satellite. The Thales team’s contribution to the solution was to wire in an RS233 serial interface cable and write some code to enable satcom and compass to talk, after which the Boeing team got it up and running, Skinner says. “The spirit of Unmanned Warrior was really to work together to help people with their problems,” he says. February/March 2017 | Unmanned Systems Technology US Navy and Royal Navy ocean gliders being recovered during Unmanned Warrior (Courtesy of the US DoD)