Sierra Nevada completes second sense-and-avoid radar sensor flight demonstration

SPARKS, Nev., 25 June 2013. Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) engineers have completed the second airborne demonstration of a prototype Airborne Sense and Avoid (ABSAA) sensor used on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), for the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) under its Multi Sensor Detect Sense and Avoid (MSDSA) program.

During this second demo, the ABSAA sensor repeatedly detected and tracked airborne intruders, resulting in more than 60 seconds of avoidance time, exceeding the program requirements. The sense-and-avoid sensor incorporates SNC’s Electronically Reconfigurable Array (ERA).

“A key program objective is to advance the technology at lower cost relative to current electronically steered antennas,” explains John Koger, MSDSA program manager, for the Air Force Research Lab in Dayton, Ohio.

“The entire sensor has been designed and developed as an ABSAA building block that is easily scalable to serve as the solution to multiple UAV concept of operations (CONOPS) and installation challenges,” says Greg Cox, corporate vice president of SNC’s Communication, Navigation, Surveillance/Air Traffic Management Business Area.

For more than 50 years, SNC has developed radar innovations and modernized radar technology development for aircraft navigation, precision approach and automatic landing systems, and now UAV sense and avoid.