Inside Unmanned Systems

APR-MAY 2017

Inside Unmanned Systems provides actionable business intelligence to decision-makers and influencers operating within the global UAS community. Features include analysis of key technologies, policy/regulatory developments and new product design.

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51 unmanned systems inside April/May 2017 ENGINEERING. PRACTICE. POLICY. Going Small Intelsat has broad experience working with drone operators having supported the U.S. military's Group 4 and 5 UAS. These catego- ries comprise the largest unmanned aircraft in the Pentagon's inventor y including the Global Hawk and the Predator. The company is now expanding to support the Group 3 air- craft, which range in weight from 55 lbs. up to 1,320 lbs. "Since those are smaller they need smaller antennas and they need satellites that can communicate with those smaller antennas. And so that's driving new types of satellites," sa id Ma rk Da n iels, vice president of new technologies and services at Intelsat General Corporation. The spacecraft Daniels is referring to is the Epic NG satellite. There are three high-through- put Epic satellites on orbit now and three more set to launch this year. There will be one more launched for a seven-space constellation. In March, Intelsat also announced plans to merge with OneWeb, which is planning to launch a f leet of 900 broadband Internet sat- ellites into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to create a virtual broadband network. The merger will get a $1.7 billion infusion from SoftBank, a Tokyo-based telecommunications firm. "OneWeb is going to be another dimension, really, in supporting small UAS," Daniels said. "I think that will allow for even smaller anten- nas and higher data rates for the smaller U.S. platforms. OneWeb, which broke ground on a satellite production facility in March, is not the only firm with plans for clouds of small spacecraft. Satellites like those from Inmarsat (far left) and Intelsat (far right) will be able provide bandwidth to support driverless cars (top left, lower right). Inmarsat already provides direct support to emergency teams in the fi eld through its Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) terminals (middle left) and United Nations teams are using AnsuR satellite-enabled drones (upper right). Satellite services also will enables new links to infrastructure (right) including the Internet of Things. set to launch this year. There will be one more In March, Intelsat also announced plans to merge with OneWeb, which is planning to launch a f leet of 900 broadband Internet sat- ellites into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to create a virtual broadband network. The merger will get a $1.7 billion infusion from SoftBank, a "OneWeb is going to be another dimension, really, in supporting small UAS," Daniels said. "I think that will allow for even smaller anten- nas and higher data rates for the smaller U.S. OneWeb, which broke ground on a satellite production facility in March, is not the only firm with plans for clouds of small spacecraft. The Cobham AVIATOR UAV 200.

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