Aerosonde, Tex­tron Sys­tems’ ver­sa­tile unmanned air­craft, has under­gone exten­sive test­ing at U.S. Army Yuma Prov­ing Ground (YPG) for most of its exis­tence, accord­ing to Mark Schauer.

“We test here when­ev­er we have changes to the sys­tem,” said Kyle Petesch, Aerosonde site lead. “The YPG per­son­nel are very atten­tive to what we ask for and easy to work with.”

“Aerosonde has been test­ing here for more than 12 years,” added Matthew O’Donald, test offi­cer. “It’s a well-proven machine, and there have been numer­ous upgrades over the years.”

The sheer vol­ume of com­mer­cial air traf­fic in the Unit­ed States means that con­duct­ing devel­op­men­tal test­ing of even the small­est UAS in a safe, sus­tained man­ner with­in the nation­al air­space is high­ly prob­lem­at­i­cal. How­ev­er, such con­straints do not exist at YPG—the prov­ing ground con­trols near­ly 2,000 square miles of restrict­ed air­space in addi­tion to boast­ing clear, sta­ble air and an extreme­ly dry cli­mate where inclement weath­er is a rarity.

“We have per­fect fly­ing weath­er, well over 300 clear days per year,” said O’Donald. “We have such a wide flight area of restrict­ed air­space that’s per­fect for cus­tomers to get what they need.”

“We like the nice, clear weath­er with­out a lot of clouds or rain delays, and def­i­nite­ly like the range space we can get here,” added Petesch. “The flat desert is good for emplac­ing ground sta­tions and mea­sur­ing far­ther dis­tances with­out trees or line-of-sight issues.”

Aerosonde is typ­i­cal­ly deployed in a sys­tem with mul­ti­ple air­craft and ground con­trol sta­tions, all of which can be accom­mo­dat­ed in a real­is­tic man­ner at YPG. The vast range and air space here means the testers can eas­i­ly eval­u­ate things like fuel con­sump­tion and the abil­i­ty to smooth­ly hand-off con­trol of the craft between con­trollers locat­ed in mul­ti­ple ground con­trol stations.

“We test not only to inte­grate prod­ucts our cus­tomers want, but also to improve our own system’s reli­a­bil­i­ty,” said James Ruthven, senior engi­neer­ing sup­port manger. “In the end, that helps our country’s mis­sion over­seas by hav­ing a qui­et, reli­able air­craft that pro­vides good optics and oth­er sensors.”

The Aerosonde is a rel­a­tive­ly qui­et air­craft, as is nec­es­sary for its sur­veil­lance mission.

“Our end user—a pla­toon out in the field—doesn’t want their tar­gets to know they’re being ed,” said Ruthven. “Our engine and air­craft has to be qui­et, so com­ing here affords us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to put peo­ple out in the desert and do acoustic mea­sure­ments. We can tai­lor how we oper­ate in the real world based on the find­ings we have here.”

The prov­ing ground’s exten­sive expe­ri­ence with test­ing UAS and asso­ci­at­ed sen­sors is anoth­er attrac­tion, as is the abil­i­ty to con­trol a large swath of the radio fre­quen­cy (RF) spec­trum. YPG has more than 500 per­ma­nent radio fre­quen­cies, and sev­er­al thou­sand tem­po­rary ones in a giv­en month.

“This is the eas­i­est place for us to oper­ate, and we get the most com­plete and com­pre­hen­sive cov­er­age in sup­port of what we’re doing,” said Ruthven. “The heat and den­si­ty alti­tudes that we find in this local envi­ron­ment are very sim­i­lar to a lot of the places we’re oper­at­ing in overseas.”

The Aerosonde will con­tin­ue com­ing to YPG for test­ing well into the future, Ruthven added.

“We’re look­ing at our tech­nol­o­gy roadmap and try­ing to grow what our sys­tem can do for the cus­tomer to meet their needs for the next decade to come,” he said. “Uti­liz­ing the test ranges, fre­quen­cies, and facil­i­ties here is cru­cial to us get­ting to that point. The work we were able to do at YPG got us to this point.”