General Atomics‘ aeronautical systems business and the U.S. Army have completed a trial run of a ground modernization software suite installed on a prototype of the Gray Eagle Extended Range unmanned aircraft system.
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, the software’s developer, conducted the flight test with the Army Unmanned Aircraft System Project Office at Fort Stewart in Georgia, the company said Tuesday.
GMSS is an experimental architecture for the Army’s Modular Open Systems Approach initiative. The technology, which was designed for the MQ-1C GE-ER drone, was able to demonstrate future airborne capability environment interoperability during the Sept. 27 test flight.
The result shows GMSS’ potential as a risk-mitigating control suite for the Gray Eagle 25M UAS, which is equipped with open architecture avionics to support multi-domain operations, GA-ASI said. The aircraft will begin trial flights using the ground modernization platform in 2023.
The demonstration was held in collaboration with Product Manager Endurance Unmanned Aircraft Systems.