The AAI Aerosonde is a small

unmanned aerial vehicle 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 controller ...

(UAV) designed to collect weather data, including

temperature Temperature is a physical quantity that expresses quantitatively the perceptions of hotness and coldness. Temperature is measured with a thermometer. Thermometers are calibrated in various temperature scales that historically have relied o ...

, atmospheric pressure,

humidity Humidity is the concentration of water vapor present in the air. Water vapor, the gaseous state of water, is generally invisible to the human eye. Humidity indicates the likelihood for precipitation, dew, or fog to be present. Humidity depe ...

, and

wind Wind is the natural movement of air or other gases relative to a planet's surface. Winds occur on a range of scales, from thunderstorm flows lasting tens of minutes, to local breezes generated by heating of land surfaces and lasting a few hou ...

measurements over oceans and remote areas. The Aerosonde was developed by

Insitu Insitu Inc. is an American company that designs, develops and manufactures unmanned aerial systems (UAS). The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Boeing Defense, Space & Security, and has several offices in the United States, the United Kin ...

, and is now manufactured by

Aerosonde Ltd Aerosonde Ltd, now part of Textron Systems Unmanned Systems, is an Australian-based developer and manufacturer of unmanned aerial vehicles, including the AAI Corporation Aerosonde series. The company has customers in Australia, Asia and North Amer ...

, which is a strategic business of AAI Corporation. The Aerosonde is powered by a modified

Enya R120 Enya Patricia Brennan (; ga, Eithne Pádraigín Ní Bhraonáin; born 17 May 1961), known professionally by the mononym Enya, is an Irish singer, songwriter, and musician known for modern Celtic music. She is the best-selling Irish solo artis ...

model aircraft engine, and carries on board a small computer, meteorological instruments, and a

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a Radionavigation-satellite service, satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of t ...

receiver for navigation. It is also used by the

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for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR).

Design and development

On August 21, 1998, a Phase 1 Aerosonde nicknamed " Laima", after the ancient Latvian deity of good fortune, completed a 2,031 mile (3,270 km) flight across the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

. This was the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by a

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 controller ...

; at the time, it was also the smallest aircraft ever to cross the Atlantic (the smallest aircraft record was subsequently broken by the Spirit of Butts Farm UAV). Launched from a roof rack of a moving car due to its lack of undercarriage, ''Laima'' flew from

Newfoundland Newfoundland and Labrador (; french: Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador; frequently abbreviated as NL) is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

to Benbecula, an island off the coast of

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

in 26 hours 45 minutes in stormy weather, using approximately 1.5 U.S. gallons (1.25 imperial gallons or 5.7 litres) of gasoline (petrol). Other than for take-off and landing, the flight was autonomous, without external control, at an altitude of 5,500 ft (1,680 meters). Aerosondes have also been the first unmanned aircraft to penetrate tropical cyclones, with an initial mission in 2001 followed by eye penetrations in 2005.

Operational history

On 5 March 2012, the

U.S. Special Operations Command The United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM or SOCOM) is the unified combatant command charged with overseeing the various special operations component commands of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force of the United States Arm ...

(SOCOM) awarded AAI a contract to provide the Aerosonde-G for their Mid-Endurance UAS II program. The catapult-launched air vehicle has a takeoff weight depending on engine type, with endurance of over 10 hours and an electro-optic/infrared and laser-pointer payload. The Aerosonde has been employed by SOCOM and U.S. Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) under the designation MQ-19 under service provision contracts. A typical system comprises four air vehicles and two ground control stations that are accommodated in tents or tailored to fit in most vehicles. The system can also include remote video terminals for individual users to uplink new navigation waypoints and sensor commands to, and receive sensor imagery and video from, the vehicle from a ruggedized

tablet Tablet may refer to: Medicine * Tablet (pharmacy), a mixture of pharmacological substances pressed into a small cake or bar, colloquially called a "pill" Computing * Tablet computer, a mobile computer that is primarily operated by touching the s ...

device. Originally, the Aerosonde suffered from engine-reliability issues, but Textron says it has rectified those issues. By November 2015, Textron Systems was performing Aerosonde operations in "eight or nine" countries for its users, including the

U.S. Marine Corps The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through comb ...

, U.S. Air Force, and SOCOM, as well as for commercial users consisting of a customer in the oil and gas industry. Instead of buying hardware, customers pay for "sensor hours," and the company decides how many aircraft are produced to meet requirements. 4,000 fee-for-service hours were being performed monthly, and the Aerosonde had exceeded 110,000 flight hours in service.Textron keen to expand Aerosonde operations
- Flightglobal.com, 10 November 2015

Variants

Specifications (Aerosonde)

General characteristics

* Crew: Remote-Controlled * Length: 5 ft 8 in (1.7 m) * Wingspan: 9 ft 8 in (2.9 m) * Height: 2 ft 0 in (0.60 m) * Wing area: 6.1 ft² (0.57 m²) * Empty: 22lb (10 kg) * Loaded: 28.9 lb (13.1 kg) * Maximum take-off: 28.9 lb (13.1 kg) * Powerplant: Modified

model aircraft engine, 1.74 hp (1280 W) Lycoming El-005 Multi Fuel power plant

Performance

* Maximum speed: 45 mph (72 km/h) * Range: 100 miles (150 km) * Service ceiling: 15,000 ft (4,500 m) * Rate of climb: ft/min ( m/min) * Wing loading: 5 lb/ft² (23 kg/m²) * Power/Mass: 0.06 hp/lb (98 W/kg)

References

* Display information at Museum of Flight in

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...

. * G.J. Holland, T. McGeer and H.H. Youngren. Autonomous aerosondes for economical atmospheric soundings anywhere on the globe. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 73(12):1987-1999, December 1992. * Cyclone reconnaissance * P-H Lin & C-S Lee.
Fly into typhoon Haiyan with UAV Aerosonde
American Meteorological Society conference paper 52113 (2002). * NASA Wallops Flight Facility press release
"Aerosonde UAV Completes First Operational Flights at NASA Wallops"
''Laima'' flight * Tad McGeer
"Laima: The first Atlantic crossing by unmanned aircraft" (1998)
* Aerosonde Pty Ltd. press release
"First UAV across the Atlantic"
* University of Washington, Aeronautics and Astronautics Program, College of Engineering:

External links

Aerosonde Pty Ltd. web site
{{US unmanned aircraft Meteorological instrumentation and equipment Single-engined pusher aircraft 1990s United States special-purpose aircraft Unmanned aerial vehicles of Australia