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19 Stratospheric Platforms,” he recounts. “I spent a lot of time looking into ‘mission systems’, which is far more than just the operator interfaces. It means developing unique payloads that perform tasks to an established minimum level of success criteria – whether that’s HD video or images, or persistent 5G in our case – as well as robust flight control systems and data links. “I’m very much now a generalist engineer, which in my view is really what you need in a chief engineer for UAV programmes. You need to really appreciate and understand all the disciplines needed to get a UAV flying under the auspices of its operator. “My disciplines took me from computer science, to radar, to systems integration, to aerial autonomy, and it’s thanks to the 10-15 years in those last two areas that I feel very well placed to bring the various, somewhat unusual technologies in HAP toward full technological readiness.” The HAP Bean and his team have been working on the design of the HAP for several years, in close collaboration with California-based Scaled Composites, which came up with the original design concept (as the craft appears in images at the moment). “We’ve gone with a high-position wing relative to the fuselage to give our antenna payload a clear line of sight to the ground, while our liquid hydrogen tanks go in the fuselage, making maximum use of the space in order to get our target endurance of 9 days,” he says. Phase 1 of the design roadmap is complete, meaning that the company is satisfied that Bean’s wing design is lightweight enough and that the concept is sufficiently matured in line with EASA standards to proceed with the plan to have a flying prototype in 2 years. He continues, “The wingspan will be just under 60 m, and the missions will start with the HAP flying up to about Kevin Bean | In conversation The HAP will fly at up to 60,000 ft, which is where we need to be to sit above the weather and be able to provide comms over a large area Unmanned Systems Technology | February/March 2022 This digital steerable antenna is the HAP’s payload, and supplies high-speed cellular internet to far-flung regions (Courtesy of Stratospheric Platforms)