Open systems architecture flown on NASA Global Hawk unmanned aircraft
NewsJune 18, 2015
EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. A NASA Global Hawk unmanned aircraft flew with a new Open Mission Systems (OMS) architecture implemented by Northrop Grumman engineers to enable the ability to quickly and cost-effectively adapt new capabilities onto unmanned aircraft systems (UASs).
This flight, which happened at NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., confirmed the ability for ground operators to send OMS payload commands and then receive OMS subsystem status responses via a Ku SATCOM Beyond-Line-Of-Sight (BLOS) communications link between the aircraft and an operations center.
A prior OMS Critical Abstraction Layer (CAL) was adapted to an OMS Open Computing Environment (OCE) on the NASA unmanned aircraft using a production RQ-4 Global Hawk airborne database computer.
In addition to the NASA Global Hawk, the OMS architecture will be adapted and then demonstrated in-flight on a manned airborne weapons system later this month.
NASA Global Hawks are preproduction variants of RQ-4 Global Hawks currently in service around the world.
