During this test campaign Alenia Aeronautica will experiment the newE-FCS (Experimental-FCS), which is a prototype of a system including anavionic computer, several sensors (inertial, air data, GPS) and electrical actuators for the primary and secondary flightcontrols. The system complies with the recent aeronauticalcertification rules and with the most advanced technical and industrialdirectives for this kind of equipments, regarding both hardware and software. As a matter of fact, the control laws introducing the rationale for the remote and automated aircraft’s control have been developed entirely by Alenia Aeronautica.
The Sky-Y aircraft is at its fourth flight-test campaign and it isenvisaged it will complete its testing programme by the end of July2010, with 15 long-endurance flights. This is the firstflight campaigntaking place at the Decimomannu air base in Sardinia, thanks to theprecious collaboration with the Ministry of Defence and the Italian Air Force.
Alenia Aeronautica reaches another important step in pursuing thewider project of the creation of a national industrial capability, ableto develop autonomously in Italy the innovative unmanned systems andthe related subsystems and technologies: the current frontier of thetwenty-first century aeronautical products.
During this flight-test campaign Alenia Aeronautica will assess also the correct integration on the aircraft of systems developed by other Finmeccanicacompanies such as the EOST45, a high performance passiveElectro-Optical Surveillance and Tracking system developed by SELEXGalileo, a new Wide-Band Data-Link developed by SELEX Communications, apowerful and reliable equipmentfor the satellite data-link of Telespazio, whose use has been granted to Alenia Aeronautica, within a cooperation agreement, by the Civil Protection Agency of the Piedmont Region.
The Sky-Y has been designed and built as a demonstrator ofintegration capabilities and innovative technologies developed byAleniaAeronautica in the field of long endurance and autonomous Unmanned Aerial Systems, such as:
- systems for autonomous on-board control and for the Ground Control Station, reliable and certifiable for the use of an unmanned air vehicle and with the characteristics of a MALE - Medium Altitude Long Endurance
- low-consumption diesel propulsion, integration of surveillancesensors (capable of detecting and recognising also very small objectsfrom long distances during day and night), high-capacitydata-processing systems and the broad-band data-link (includingsatellite) to manage and distribute information to end-users on theground.
