On this patriotic day celebrating the birth of American independence, it's fitting for us to reflect on the Voyager spacecraft launched from our great nation under the visionary watch of Carl Sagan, one of our greatest astronomers, planetary scientists and cosmologists. The two Voyagers are the farthest-reaching unmanned missions in human history and both robots are still operational today, 40+ years later!

In an interesting reflection on unmanned systems aviation history, the # 20 - 13 - 27 JUNE 2020 edition of the UNMANNED SYSTEMS NEWS (USN) describes the primitive origins of today’s ubiquitous drones: “In the 1940s, Drones Were Just Something for Navy Gunners to Shoot At (These were TRUE DRONES not UAVs). These were Radio-controlled, gyro-stabilized, and powered by an externally mounted, gasoline-powered pulsejet engine, which used a design similar to the German V-1 rocket to deliver 55 pounds of thrust. The ‘Katydid’ was one of the most sophisticated UAVs of the mid- to late 1940s. Recognizable by its distinct V-tail, the 320-pound drone could be launched via an AT-1 catapult or released from the bomb rack of a PBY-4 Catalina, at which point gunners would attempt to draw a bead on it.”

CUAS News reported that “Europe’s leading provider of Rotary Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) platforms, UMS SKELDAR, will host a webinar to formally announce its new contract win with the Belgian and Dutch Navies.” The deal will be the first to use the “Toolbox” concept, in which a variety of autonomous UAVs and underwater vehicles (AUVs) will work in unison. SKELDAR V-200 was selected owing to its advanced heavy fuel engine. It is equipped for day or night surveillance and 3D mapping. First deliveries are scheduled for 2023.

On June 18, in its daily eBrief, the AUVSI posted a story by Harry McNabbon on FLIR Nano drone swarms that recently appeared on Dronelife.com. FLIR, maker of the Black Hornet NANO drone was awarded a $20.6 million contract to produce Black Hornet® 3 Personal Reconnaissance Systems (PRS) for the military. “The recent contract for Black Hornets is an addition to the $39.7 million contract that the U.S. Army awarded FLIR in January of last year.”

The BBC recently reported that the European Space Agency is “moving rapidly to develop its next Mars rover.” This mission is part of a project to return samples to Earth. “Esa has awarded an advanced B2 contract to the UK arm of the aerospace giant Airbus, which will enable the firm to kick-start the necessary technologies. The new rover is dubbed "Fetch" because its mission will be to find and retrieve the rock samples that have been collected and cached on the surface by the American Perseverance rover, which is heading to Mars next month.”

Pierce Aerospace is a “Remote Identification” company that supplies drone Remote ID information to the US Department of Defense and commercial sectors. Pierce Aerospace uses their identification management technologies to assist in identifying drones while they are flying in the National Airspace System using broadcast or network identification methods. Gary Bullock said, “As the proposed rules stand, if a drone is larger than 250 grams, it will have to be equipped with Remote ID.” Bullock explained, “It’s like a digital license plate in the sky.”
Pierce Aerospace saw a business opportunity given the high demand for remote drone identification services, and has several remote ID engagements. The US Air Force awarded a contract to Pierce in Fall 2018 and they’ve worked with US Army Futures Command since early 2019, including providing Remote ID capabilities to live-fire experiments.
Commercial engagements include alignments with Redwing Labs, a drone delivery company located in India and Altitude Angel, an Unmanned Traffic Management provider based in the United Kingdom. “We’re an integrator that adds value to other existing or future technologies including UTM providers or Counter-UAS systems,” explained Bullock. “This is an infrastructure technology and we’re happy to support the success of others as this industry grows.”

KUBeetle-S weighs 15.8grams and is capable of controlled multi-directional flight for up to 9 minutes. The aerial robot is a biomimetic design patterned after the flying beetle, Allomyrina dichotoma.

Can small-diameter tactical tunnel networks resupply the military effectively? Can a giant “robot earthworm” dig the tunnels? DefenseOne[dot]com reports that “Underminer aims to create aggressive tunneling approaches, downhole sensing, and …could incorporate capabilities from the commercial sector, including oil and gas, utility, geological, environmental, and other industries.”

Riding a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, the vehicle that resembles a little sister to the Space Shuttle blasted off from Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 9:14 a.m. EDT (1314 GMT). The secretive mission explores microwave power transmission, and is summarized in a few images and an illustration, in a report by Amy Thompson, courtesy of Space[dot]com.

At a recent C4ISR Conference, a senior DARPA official noted that a DARPA project in gestation could boost the NAVY’s unmanned surface vessel aspirations forward a decade. Multiple programs are underway for the NAVY’s development of medium and large unmanned surface vehicles. The DARPA project, christened “NOMARS” (for “no mariners”), is a separate mission, but the benefits it might produce could be “a giant leap forward” for the NAVY concepts, said Mike Leahy, head of the DARPA Tactical Technology Office.

The UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) has awarded a contract to QinetiQ to lead phase five of the Maritime Autonomous Platform Exploitation (MAPLE) project. MAPLE will assist British warships in the integration of unmanned vehicles and payloads that best fit specific mission requirements. Objectives include enabling “the use of multiple MAPLE systems in a force, as well as the integrated command and control of effector systems deployed from maritime autonomous systems.”

DARPA announced 13 April that it had issued 9 new drone contracts to companies developing drone swarm tech. DARPA is stimulating research through its OFFSET (Offensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics) program. The program works in five main areas: physical test bed, swarm tactics, swarm autonomy, human-swarm teaming, and virtual environments. The agency seeks to encourage rapid innovation in one or more of those areas. “The nine awards mark the fifth such swarm sprint, with this one focused on swarm tactics and physical test beds in an urban environment.”