Date: 19 November, 2007
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA ASI) today announced that the first Sky Warrior aircraft flew successfully from the company’s El Mirage Flight Operations Facility in Adelanto, Calif., on 6 June 2007.
The company-owned Block 0 aircraft completed all stated objectives for its maiden flight. The flight marked an important milestone in the successful execution of GA-ASI’s multi-year contract for the U.S. Army’s Extended Range/Multi-Purpose (ER/MP) Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Programme. Built in essentially the same configuration as the Sky Warrior UAS being developed for the ER/MP Programme, additional Sky Warrior Block 0 aircraft will be produced to demonstrate the maturity of the technology being incorporated into the programme.
These aircraft will deploy to Southwest Asia early next year to showcase the capability of the design to support the development phase of ER/MP. The deployment will also provide an accelerated capability of the program to support deployed Army combat troops. A derivative of the combat-proven Predator, the Sky Warrior aircraft is designed to meet challenging U.S. Army requirements for persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and tactical strike operations.
The aircraft will perform long-endurance, surveillance, communications relay and weapons delivery missions with double the weapons capacity of Predator. Featuring a Heavy Fuel Engine (HFE) for increased supportability in the field, Sky Warrior can fly above 29,000 feet on jet or diesel fuel with increased horsepower and significantly improved fuel efficiency.
The HFE power plant also reduces maintenance costs, offers increased service life, and greatly simplifies logistics by ensuring a more readily available fuel source. The aircraft is also equipped with triple redundant avionics, redundant flight controls/surfaces, and electro-optical/infra-red (EO/IR) and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) payloads.