PAE ISR and NASA have agreed to demonstrate the Resolute Eagle unmanned aircraft system within the National Airspace System in 2020 in support of an effort to fully integrate UAS into the country’s skies.
The company said Tuesday it will demonstrate the Resolute Eagle in 2020 and work with other firms such as Fortem Technologies, Pathfinder Systems and Sagetech to integrate detect-and-avoid technologies into the aircraft.
“Our engineering team will conduct a trade study in parallel of radar, acoustic and optical DAA technologies for trade-offs in size, weight and power, and performance against Federal Aviation Administration DAA standards,” said Jake Jacobs, chief technology officer at PAE ISR who leads investigatory efforts under the NASA program.
Beth Beach, vice president of business development at PAE ISR, added the company will collaborate with the two agencies to address UAS type certification challenges and come up with an operational procedure for pipeline inspection using Resolute Eagle.
The Resolute Eagle is designed to deliver a variety of line-of-sight support functions for military, homeland security, law enforcement, commercial and humanitarian applications.
The UAS also has a 75-pound payload capacity and a very low acoustic signature.
General Atomics and Textron‘s Bell subsidiary will also perform demonstrations in support of the integration effort.