Endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicles is a research and development effort led by the Air Force to demonstrate, transition, and field an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) capable of multiple-day duration flights while remaining cost-effective. The program aims to shift the UAS design paradigm by leveraging commercial-off-the-shelf technologies to minimize expensive custom/proprietary items and simplify maintenance and manpower costs. It also focuses on maintaining a modular and flexible architecture for rapid integration of customer-driven payload options. The program leverages technologies and expertise from across all of the Air Force Research Laboratories, integrating and testing a variety of technologies.

The specific objectives of this program include initiating and completing integration and testing of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) turbo-charged engine to enable ULTRA altitude and airspeed for relevant geographically-constrained mission areas of interest. Additionally, it aims to initiate integration and testing of COTS engine control unit, continue integration of ULTRA into the control system for common control of multiple unmanned aerial systems, conduct aircrew training to support extended operational testing and evaluation of ULTRA, develop and refine training curriculum and documentation based on results from operational test and evaluation, initiate early sustainment analyses including long lead item evaluation of hardware and spares, as well as continue operational test and evaluation of ULTRA in operationally relevant environments. These efforts are aimed at meeting validated requirements prior to full rate production.