USA — Army plans large manned-unmanned demo

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is plan­ning a largest-of-its-kind demon­stra­tion — called Manned Unmanned Sys­tems Inte­gra­tion Con­cept, or MUSIC — at Doug­way Prov­ing Ground, Utah, in Sep­tem­ber of next year, ser­vice offi­cials said.

A Shad­ow unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle touch­es down at Camp Taji, Iraq, last year. In Sep­tem­ber of next year, Army offi­cials just announced that an inte­gra­tion exer­cise will fea­ture Apache heli­copter pilots con­trol­ling Shad­ow, Hunter and Raven UAVs. Pho­to cred­it Sgt. Travis Zielin­s­ki Click to enlarge

“It’s going to be the largest sin­gle demon­stra­tion of inter­op­er­abil­i­ty between manned and unmanned sys­tems ever con­duct­ed,” said Tim Owings, deputy project man­ag­er for Army unmanned air­craft systems. 

The demon­stra­tion is aimed at ana­lyz­ing the progress of evolv­ing manned-unmanned team­ing tech­nolo­gies. It will show­case level‑4 UAS inter­op­er­abil­i­ty where­in Apache Attack heli­copter pilots will have the abil­i­ty to con­trol the pay­load of a near­by UAS from the cock­pit; the Apache pilots will also be able to view feeds from UAS sys­tems in real-time from the cock­pit as well. 

Dur­ing the exer­cise, the Grey Eagle, Hunter, Shad­ow, Raven and the Apache Block III will all be exchang­ing infor­ma­tion and exchang­ing com­mand and con­trol while in flight, Owings said. 

“The Block III Apache is going to take con­trol of the UAS, point the pay­load and do a mis­sion. All the oth­er sys­tems will see Apache video and Kiowa video. We will have a Uni­ver­sal Ground Con­trol Sta­tion on the ground as well,” said Owings. 

Source:
U.S. Army 

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