The Navy’s Mi2 Technology Demonstrator program in April selected the Martin UAV Corp. V-BAT 128 unmanned aerial system for its vertical takeoff and landing competition, and details of the system’s components are beginning to emerge.
The system comprises a ground station and a tail-sitting unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a variety of visual and electromagnetic sensors. The company says a fully fueled UAV with payload weighs 125 pounds and has a wingspan of 9.7 feet. Its endurance is 11 hours, with a service ceiling of 20,000 feet and a top speed of around 90 knots, thanks to its two-stroke fuel-injected 288 cubic-centimeter Suter TOA engine. The tail-mounted engine’s ducted fan nacelle supports the aircraft’s landing gear. A 25-pound field-swappable payload can carry a variety of sensors.
In May, Persistent Systems announced it would supply the UAV with its MPU5 Wave Relay mobile ad hoc networking (MANet) module, which Persistent says will manage V-BAT data link and command and control. The company says the system does not depend on satellites and is designed to resist electronic warfare threats. The radios integrate data
and video with a computer system that uses the Android operating system.
The V-BAT will include Persistent’s integrated reduced size, weight, and power Embedded Module for networking and video encoding.
In June, Trillium Engineering said Martin UAV selected its 8-inch Orion HD80 camera systems for the V-BAT. The gimballed cameras all include a 30x optical zoom, with variants offering medium- and long-wave infrared camera options.
The Naval Air Warfare Center Air Division (NAWCAD) AIRWorks unit sponsored the Mi2 competition in 2020 to identify expeditionary unmanned aerial systems that can operate in austere deployed environments with minimal support systems—especially dedicated launch or recovery equipment. The ability to launch from and recover on a moving target—a ship under way—was crucial. After tests of the V-BAT and an L3 Harris Technologies FVR-90 quadcopter (the top 2 among 13 submissions) at the Yuma Proving Ground in late 2020, the Martin system was chosen for development. NAWCAD and the Plano, Texas, company were expected to announce the details of the development contract in July.
—Brian O’Rourke
