Air Force Demos UTC Sensor Onboard General Atomics Avenger UAV; Chris Pehrson Comments

The U.S. Air Force has completed a flight demonstration of a United Technologies Corp.-built sensor onboard a General Atomics-made unmanned aerial vehicle, Flightglobal reported Monday.

Chris Pehrson, senior director of strategic development for General Atomics’ aeronautical systems business, told Flightglobal reporter James Drew that the service branch performed seven flights between January and February to demonstrate UTC’s MS-177 sensor aboard General Atomics’ Predator C Avenger UAV.

“They used it to look at some land and maritime objects,” Pehrson said of the demonstration.

“The integration and the flight demo and datalink software worked as expected.”

The service branch told Flightglobal that it lacks aircraft designation for the Avenger system and that it intends to incorporate the MS-177 sensor with the Northrop Grumman-built RQ-4B Block 30 Global Hawk drone.

The Air Force will hand over the sensor to Northrop in preparation for a series of tests in January 2017, according to the report.