General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) has successfully
completed wind tunnel testing on a model of its Mariner unmanned
aircraft. GA-ASI conducted aerodynamic testing of the Mariner airframe
to support the selection of Team Mariner UAS, an initiative with
advanced electronics systems integrator Lockheed Martin, as the solution
for the US Navy's Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS)
programme.
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The Mariner design is a derivative of the company's
operationally proven turboprop Predator B unmanned aircraft that has
been optimised for the unique demands of the Navy, assuring a low-cost
and low-risk solution to meet the service's needs.
The goal of the testing was to validate key metrics related to the
design performance of the Mariner aircraft.
The Mariner wind tunnel testing will help reduce programme risks by
providing additional data to improve model fidelity, instead of relying
on computational analyses alone. It also provided the opportunity to
correlate key performance data to analytical tools such as computational
fluid dynamics and to calibrate various analytical methods. In addition,
the testing enabled a specific set of configuration changes to be
evaluated economically, at a faster pace, and for important performance
sensitivities to be generated.
Designed to provide unmanned persistent Intelligence, Surveillance,
and Reconnaissance (ISR) over littoral and broad ocean areas of
interest, the Mariner UAS will provide for planning, control, tasking,
collection, processing, analysis, and dissemination of actionable
information in support of the US Navy.
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