Tag - Raytheon

US Army Selects Raytheon for Near-Term Counter-UAS Mission

The U.S. Army recently announced the selection of Raytheon's Coyote unmanned aircraft system and the Ku-band Radio Frequency System (KRFS) radar, to counter the escalating threat of enemy UAVs in the skies above the battlefield. Equipped with an advanced seeker and warhead, the Coyote-enabled system can successfully identify and eliminate threat UAVs when paired with an advanced electronically scanned array KRFS radar, which acquires and accurately tracks all sizes of UAS threats. “Enemy unmanned aircraft are among the biggest threats facing our ground troops today,” said Dr. Thomas Bussing, Raytheon Advanced Missile Systems vice president. “Our small, expendable Coyote provides the Army with an affordable and highly effective solution for countering the growing UAS threat.”  

Coyote UAS

The most capable UAS in its class, Coyote is small, expendable and tube-launched. It can deploy from the ground, air or a ship. Coyotes can fly individually or netted together in swarms. They are adaptable for a variety of missions including surveillance, electronic warfare and strike. The versatile Coyote is also used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for hurricane tracking and modeling. Raytheon is finalizing development of advanced Coyote variants that will fly faster and farther. Because of urgent operational need, the Army plans to use Coyote as a counter-UAS solution before years' end.  

KRFS Radar

The KRFS radar in use today is a multi-mission radar providing rocket, artillery and mortar, sense and warn, and counter-UAS mission capabilities. Its accuracy enables significant UAS mission performance including precision fire control and UAS swarm scenarios at tactically significant distances. “The warfighter needs a complete mission solution to successfully counter UAS threats,” said Dave Gulla, Raytheon Mission Systems and Sensors vice president. “Our quickly transportable system that tracks low-swarming threats with KRFS and eliminates those threats with Coyote, is a game changer for the U.S. Army.” To date, Raytheon has delivered 40 KRFS radars with more than 32 deployed by the Army. Furthermore, it is upgrading the systems for extending capability and ensuring support of the soldier beyond 2025.

Raytheon Develops Unmanned Vehicle Swarm Technology

Raytheon‘s BBN Technologies announced it is developing technology to direct and control swarms of small, autonomous air and ground vehicles. This technology falls under DARPA’s Offensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics program. The technology includes:
  • a visual interface that allows “drag and drop” creation and manipulation of drone tactics
  • a game-based simulator to evaluate those tactics
  • a physical swarm testbed to perform live tactics evaluations
“Operators use speech or gestures to control the swarm. This is a tremendous advantage during operations,” said Shane Clark, Ph.D. and principal investigator on the program. “The system provides sensor feeds and mission status indicators for complete situational awareness.”  

Flexible, scalable

The flexible, scalable programming software and simulation environment means users can coordinate drone behaviors in teams composed of different vehicle types that use various sensors. DARPA is inviting additional organizations to participate in OFFSET as “sprinters” through an open Broad Agency Announcement. Sprinters can create their own novel swarm tactics and the Raytheon BBN team will work with them to evaluate the tactics in simulation, and possibly field them for live trials. In 2016, Raytheon, as part of the Office of Naval Research LOCUST program, conducted demonstrations that successfully netted together 30 Coyote UAVs in a swarm.  

Raytheon Announces Block 2 Update for Coyote tube-launched UAS

Recently, Raytheon announced the development of a “Block 2” update of the Coyote, a tube-launched unmanned aircraft system (UAS) it acquired more than two years ago. The aim is to produce a low-cost, multi-mission-capable air vehicle that users ultimately dispose of once it completes a mission. “We do recover and reuse them in our development work. However, for operational use and purposes, it is meant to be disposable or ‘attritable’. It’s meant to be a one-time platform just like a Tomahawk missile,” said John Hobday, Raytheon’s Coyote business development lead. “The difference is that we are approaching the Coyote platform not only as a disposable, but as a low-cost system. That’s part of the disruptive nature of what we’re trying to do with this platform—to create this low-cost appliance, if you will.”  

History of Coyote UAS

Originally, a company named Advanced Ceramic Research, of Tucson, Arizona, developed the Coyote, Manta and Silver Fox UAS under small business contracts from the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR). Defense contractor BAE Systems acquired the company in 2009, then sold it back to one of the former owners under the name Sensintel. Raytheon acquired Sensintel in 2015 and folded the company into its Tucson-based Missile Systems business. The 13-pound, propeller-driven air vehicle, features foldout tandem wings and tail fins. It deploys from a standard A-size sonobuoy tube with a parachute, or from a pneumatic ground box launcher. Potential missions include using the Coyote fitted with sensors for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), as a communications relay, an electronic warfare asset or a loitering munition. Another scenario envisions multiple Coyotes working cooperatively as a drone swarm. The Coyote is larger and carries a four-pound payload. This is more than available from the similar AeroVironment Switchblade, a six-pound flying munition and ISR platform; and the four-pound Lockheed Martin Vector Hawk, a canister-launched drone that has deployed from an autonomous underwater vehicle.  

Coyote UAS Updates

Raytheon (Chalet 294, Static B8) is redesigning the Coyote to incorporate a turbine engine for high-speed applications, in addition to the current battery-powered pusher propeller approach, Hobday said. The manufacturer’s focus is to maintain a common airframe which can launch from the ground, a ship or an aircraft. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) used the Coyote as a sensing platform to conduct hurricane research. The agency first deployed the small UAS in a hurricane in September 2014 when it launched the Coyote from a Lockheed WP-3D Orion turboprop into the eye of Hurricane Edouard. The Lockheed Martin C-130 and Cessna Caravan have also served as launch platforms for the Coyote, Hobday said. Under an ONR future naval capability program, Raytheon is working to introduce it on the Boeing P-8A Poseidon antisubmarine warfare aircraft, a derivative of the 737-800 airliner. Work also continues with NOAA and the four U.S. military services, Hobday said. He declined to comment on a report in specialist defense journal Janes earlier this year, based on an interview with Raytheon executives, that the U.S. Army has asked the company to develop the Coyote as a counter-UAS asset to intercept rogue drones. “All of the various iterations of the Coyote airframe are driven by customer requirements,” Hobday said. “This is a system that we can very rapidly modify for emerging missions to meet new requirements that our various Department of Defense customers have for different types of missions, different concepts of operation.” He added: “Always the intent is a very low-cost, commoditized ‘truck’ that is disposable at the end of whatever its defined mission is.”

Coyote UAV recently deployed to track and model Hurricane Maria

Coyote UAVThe scientific community continues its quest to better understand hurricane behavior. Recently, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) deployed six Raytheon Coyote UAVs to track and model Hurricane Maria. The Coyotes flew directly into the storm and provided researchers an unprecedented view of the hurricane. The UAVs launched from a NOAA WP-3D Orion – fondly dubbed the “hurricane hunter”. The Coyote operated in the lower part of the hurricane, an area impossible for manned aircraft to reach.  

Coyote UAV: at your disposal

“Our expendable Coyote UAVs are delivering vital information about these potentially deadly storms; and that can help save lives,” said Dr. Thomas Bussing, Raytheon vice president of Advanced Missile Systems. The Coyote gathered and transmitted continuous storm data directly to the National Hurricane Center, all while navigating winds exceeding 100 miles per hour. NOAA scientists hope to gain better understanding of hurricane storm behavior by evaluating the data collected. Researchers can also fly Coyotes throughout the storms, revisiting key locations inside hurricanes to obtain the most robust data possible. The hope is that researchers can use all this data to improve the accuracy of hurricane forecasts.  

History of the Coyote UAV

Developed originally for military use, the Coyote is a small, expendable UAV. It can launch via air or ground and is often deployed in situations that are too dangerous for manned aircraft. It boasts over an hour flight endurance and travels up to 50 miles from its host. The Coyote is just one part of Raytheon’s family of high-tech weather forecasting technology. Additional weather technology includes: the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite instrument aboard NOAA’s Suomi NPP spacecraft, the common ground system for the Joint Polar Satellite System, and the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System – a powerful forecast toolkit that helps meteorologists make sense of the massive amounts of weather data that modern sensors collect.