Scott Nicholas
General Atomics‘ aeronautical systems business unit has demonstrated its network centric communications pod offering’s function to facilitate communications data links between U.S. Marine Corps ground and air forces and unmanned aircraft systems.
The company said Tuesday it has integrated the system aboard a Predator B Block 5 and operated using a Block 30 ground control station during an exercise in July at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in California.
NCCP provided adaptive networking wideband waveform retransmissions and tactical targeting network technology alongside C-band remote operational video enhanced receiver full-motion video to users that have connectivity and communications equipment and battlefield soldiers with Kinetic Integrated Low-cost Software Integrated Tactical Combat Handheld tablets.
Claudio Pereida, executive vice president for mission systems at the GA-ASI business, said the exercise helped demonstrate NCCP’s features added to the Predator B for extended communication ranges and mission capacities of forces in distributed operations.
Data and imagery captured during the exercise with GA-ASI’s Lynx multi-mode radar were transmitted to Camp Pendleton’s battle simulation center and shown on the Claw 3 integrated sensor payload control and analysis software system to aid in USMC’s intelligence analysis capacity.
