The AeroVironment FQM-151 Pointer is a small

UAV An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without any human pilot, crew, or passengers on board. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), which includes adding a ground-based controlle ...

used by the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

and

Marine Corps Marines, or naval infantry, are typically a military force trained to operate in littoral zones in support of naval operations. Historically, tasks undertaken by marines have included helping maintain discipline and order aboard the ship (refle ...

for battlefield surveillance. It was designed by AeroVironment Incorporated, which is run by

Paul MacCready Paul B. MacCready Jr. (September 25, 1925 – August 28, 2007) was an American aeronautical engineer. He was the founder of AeroVironment and the designer of the human-powered aircraft that won the first Kremer prize. He devoted his life to dev ...

, noted for such pioneering aircraft as the human-powered

Gossamer Condor The MacCready ''Gossamer Condor'' was the first human-powered aircraft capable of controlled and sustained flight; as such, it won the Kremer prize in 1977. Its design was led by Paul MacCready of AeroVironment, Inc. Design and development ...

and a robotic flying pterodactyl replica. The Pointer was developed with company funds, with the US Army and Marine Corps obtaining a total of about 50 beginning in 1990. The radio-controlled Pointer was built mostly of high-impact

Kevlar Kevlar (para-aramid) is a strong, heat-resistant synthetic fiber, related to other aramids such as Nomex and Technora. Developed by Stephanie Kwolek at DuPont in 1965, the high-strength material was first used commercially in the early 1970s a ...

. It resembled a hobbyist's RC sailplane with a small engine added, with the wing standing up above the fuselage on a pylon and a pusher propeller on the wing behind the pylon. A lithium battery pack powered the UAV's compact electric motor to drive the propeller. The little Pointer was hand-launched. It was recovered simply by putting it into a flat spin, allowing it to flutter down to the ground. The Pointer carried a CCD camera fixed in its nose, meaning it had to be directly pointed at its target to see it, which is how the machine got its name. The CCD camera had a resolution of 360 x 380 pixels and a viewing aperture of 22 x 30 degrees. Video could be fed back to the ground station by radio or fiber-optic link. The ground station recorded flight imagery on an eight-millimeter video cassette recorder. Digital compass headings were superimposed on the imagery and the controller could add verbal comments. The imagery could be inspected with normal, freeze-frame, fast, or slow-motion replay. The aircraft system and the ground control station were carried in separate backpacks. It required a pilot and an observer. The Pointers in US military service have now been upgraded with a

GPS/INS GPS/INS is the use of GPS satellite signals to correct or calibrate a solution from an inertial navigation system (INS). The method is applicable for any GNSS/INS system. Overview GPS/INS method The GPS gives an absolute drift-free position v ...

capability, and it has led to a number of derivatives. chapter. The Pointer itself remains in use, having seen action during the intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Specifications

References

This article contains material that originally came from the web articl
''Unmanned Aerial Vehicles''
by Greg Goebel, which exists in the Public Domain. FQM151 Pointer Electric aircraft 1980s United States military reconnaissance aircraft Unmanned aerial vehicles of the United States Single-engined pusher aircraft Parasol-wing aircraft T-tail aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1988 {{UAV-stub

Specifications

See also

References