Page 26 - Australian Defence Mag Jul-Aug 2020

26 SURVEILLANCE IN LAND DOMAIN LAND 129
JULY/AUGUST 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
Duggan disclosed that a further option – presumably in- cluded as such in Insitu’s tender response – was the Inte- grator ER (Extended Range) variant launched in September 2018. This features satellite communications, providing a 370 km range with 10 hours on station, or
manned and unmanned aircraft in terms of looking at the customer mission, selecting what they believe to be the most appropriate platform and then integrating it with the opti- mum selection of sensors.
555 km with six hours on station.
“Satcom really releases Integrator ER for missions that previously would have been
the purview of the RAAF,” Duggin said. “This is a great option, whether or not it’s adopted immediately. The platform is mature and should Army want to start SATCOM operations just buy it off the shelf, buy the modules, plug them in and
off you go.”
LEIDOS APPROACH
Leidos Australia is not a UAV manufacturer but has its own capabilities in terms of how to move information and get that information from the sensor to the decisionmaker.
“Capability is more than simply the platform, it’s every- thing that sits beneath it and Leidos has been doing that for a range of US government customers over many years,” business development lead Martin Faulkner said to ADM.
“One of our subsidiary companies in the US, Airborne Solutions Operation, has a history of working with both
“Looking at different UAV manufactur- ers when we got interested in Land 129, we ended up settling on Aeronautics from Israel and their Orbiter 4.
“It’s the most modern of the UAVs on of- fer to Army, it builds on Aeronautics’ his- tory of UAV manufacture over a number of years, it’s now in service with several lead- ing but undisclosed operators, and it has great growth potential”.
Orbiter 4 has six different autonomous flight modes, a boomerang-shaped wing- span of 5.4 metres, maximum speed of 70
“ALL FOUR CONTENDERS ARE CONFIGURED FOR MARITIME AS WELL AS LAND-BASED OPERATIONS, ALTHOUGH AS YET ORBITER 4 IS POWERED BY AN UNLEADED PETROL ENGINE.”
knots, a service ceiling of 18,000 ft, line-of-sight commu- nications up to 150 kilometres, and 24-hour endurance. It also can simultaneously carry and operate two different pay- loads up to a combined maximum weight of 12 kilograms.
Unusually, the UAV is catapult launched and recovered by parachute. Power is currently provided by a spark igni- tion (SI) fuel-based engine with multi – fuel capability.
“We’ve taken notice of the Commonwealth’s desire for a heavy fuel solution in the future; I can’t say anything more