The technology combines the key benefits of an aircraft with the benefits of a
satellite (on-station persistence, no logistics tail, zero emissions, energy
independence, minimal fleet size, absence of in-country footprint).
Quite an artistic rendering of Vulture's Objective System
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UenP79B7yeQ
Department of Defense demands for surveillance, intelligence and reconnaissance
data from both airborne and space-based (satellite) assets are steadily
increasing. Meeting these demands has become progressively more challenging with
current technologies. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is
working on a solution to combine the advantages of both asset types. Vulture
will develop and demonstrate the technology to enable a single high-altitude
unmanned airplane to
operate continuously on-station, unreplenished, for a period of five years.
Is this part of their high/low altitude GPS surveillance system of PINS ( a
knock off of GWEN?)
http://www.darpa.mil/dso/thrusts/phys...
DARPA news release from
Sept 15, 2010
http://www.darpa.mil/news/2010/NewsRe...
Vulture technology enables a re-taskable, persistent pseudo-satellite capability
in an aircraft package. The technology combines the key benefits of an aircraft
(flexibility & responsiveness, sensor resolution, reduced transmit/receive
power, affordable deployment) with the benefits of a satellite (on-station
persistence, no logistics tail, zero emissions, energy independence, minimal
fleet size, absence of in-country footprint). The system has potential in
numerous roles: operation as a single platform, as
a formation of multiple aircraft or as a constellation providing infrastructure
augmentation or recovery.
The Vulture program will conduct subscale and full-scale technology maturation
and demonstration activities to prove-out critical technologies. The key
technical pillars include solar energy collection, reliable and efficient energy
storage and retrieval, aircraft reliability and mission assurance, and
aeroelastics and flight control of a very large, flexible, lightly-loaded
aircraft structure.
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