Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been operational for many years – General Atomics Predator since 1995 and Northrop Grumman Global Hawk since 1998, and variations of each one have logged many thousands of flight hours in Afghanistan and Iraq, providing surveillance and reconnaissance capability, and in the case of Predator, tactical weapons support. But both are restricted by a limited loiter time of 24 to 36 hours, far short of what military commanders would really like to see.
 General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper Predator UAV |  Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk UAV |
This detail explains the resurgence of Lighter-Than-Air (LTA) aerostats designed to provide persistent Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) for many days, weeks or even months at a time. Sometime this summer Lockheed Martin will conduct a test flight for the High Altitude Long Endurance Demonstrator (HALE-D) at an altitude exceeding 50,000 feet for an expected period of 10 to 14 days.
Lockheed Martin HALE-D Airship
The Lockheed Martin High Altitude Airship (HAA™) – and its prototype the High Altitude Long Endurance-Demonstrator (HALE-D) – is an un-tethered, unmanned lighter-than-air vehicle that will operate above the jet stream in a geostationary position to deliver persistent station keeping as a surveillance platform, telecommunications relay, or a weather observer.
Taking a different approach, the Army’s Persistent Threat Detection System (PTDS), currently deployed inside Iraq and Afghanistan, is based on Lockheed Martin’s 74K aerostat. The complete PTDS consists of an aerostat, tether, mobile mooring platform, mission payloads, ground control shelter, maintenance and officer shelter, power generators and site-handling equipment.
Lockheed Martin 74K Aerostat System
Sophisticated electronics, ranging from high-resolution video cameras to electro-optical IR sensors, communications equipment, dual-band radars, fire-control sensors and laser rangefinders will see deployment based on the capabilities of each aerostat and specific needs of the combat operation.
So what does this mean down on the ground? Receiving, monitoring, storing and analyzing such large volumes of sensitive data being transmitted around the clock for significant periods of time will require military-grade embedded computers with the computational power to handle the load.
Whether it requires a cluster computing solution such as the TRC5000 5U rackmount computer that will accommodate up to four PICMG 1.3 single board computers using a multi-segement PCI Express 2.0 backplane, or a GPU-ready platform like the TCS4501 4U rackmount computer that can support up to four NVIDIA® Tesla® C20-series GPU processors, Trenton has the engineering, manufacturing and integration expertise to build a customer-driven computing solution that meets your requirements. Give us a call at 800.875.6031 or 770.287.3100 to discuss your unique project needs.
Trenton's TRC5000 5U Rackmount Computer
