Unmanned aerial vehicle completes first test for Canadian army in Kabul
at 11:51 on November 6, 2003, EST.
KABUL (CP) - With a whoosh and a cloud of vapour, the Canadian army's new remotely operated aircraft rocketed off a launching derrick on Thursday, flying for 22 minutes in what officials say was a successful first test.
The 3½-metre-long unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, reached altitudes of 2,743 metres above sea level, or 823 metres above the Afghan capital as it took video footage of a palace ruin and the main Canadian base.
The test complete, ground controllers shut down the 65-horsepower Bombardier snowmobile engine, simultaneously deployed a 117-square-metre parachute and popping open a series of air bags to cushion its landing.
"It did what we expected bit to do today," said the test director, air force Maj. Michael Addison, a native of Greenwood, N.S.
"Our test departments today were basically launch and landing. Both seemed to go well."
Its flight concluded, the aircraft floated down by parachute, coming down in a field a few hundred metres from the base, with soldiers and Afghan children converging on it at a dead run.
Locals abandoned donkey carts and hand trolleys at a nearby roadside to take a look as soldiers strapped the boxy, shuttle-like aircraft to a crane and lifted it onto a truck.
"It's a phenomenal capability," said Maj. Dyrald Cross, officer commanding the Intelligence Surveillance Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance company, or I-STAR.
The high-tech arm of the 2,000-member Canadian force in Kabul, I-STAR already has two Coyote armoured-vehicle troops and an electronic warfare troop among its ranks.
It will begin operating the $33-million, high-reconnaissance system on behalf of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force when tests conclude later this month.
Its roles will include gathering video intelligence on suspected terrorist activity around the city and in the mountains that border it.
"It's one part of the tool set that the commander has to gather information," said the project director, Lt.-Col. Dana Clarke.
"In Afghanistan, it's the only tool he has to look down into the compounds in areas where he can't see or traverse readily."
The Sperwer (pronounced 'SPARE-vare') unmanned aerial vehicles were built by the French firm SAGEM under contract to Oerlikon Contraves Inc. of St-Jean-Sur-Richelieu, Que.
The Kabul Multi-National Brigade, ISAF's operational end, has been using German UAVs until the Canadian ones are ready to go.
Soldiers from Cross' company have been in France training on the units for nine weeks. They've been trickling into Kabul for several days now, setting up the self-contained, mobile computer centres from which they control the aircraft and retrieve data.
The concept of remotely operated aircraft has been kicked around the military for more than 25 years, but the Sperwer contract came together in just 11 weeks - "something of a record," said Clarke.
"We've been a lot of years waiting for it but when they decided they wanted one, they got it," said Cross, a self-described army brat.
"To think that the contract was signed on the first of August, the troop is trained, the equipment is here and it's just had its first flight on the sixth of November. Incredible."
The UAVs' propellers are made of laminated beechwood, which are intended to break off and spare the engines damage in hard landings.
Already used by six countries, they are launched by catapult from the back of a truck, going from zero to 40 metres per second in 15 metres.
They can remain airborne up to six hours on gasoline with a range of 180 kilometres, or more if ground stations or another UAV relays commands.
Flights can be pre-programmed using computerized maps or changed in mid-flight from the ground stations or through another UAV.
Video is shot from a ball housing mounted on the underside of the aircraft, called an orientable line-of-sight payload, and can be controlled by a joystick in front of a screen generating a live image.
The camera can lock onto a target while the plane changes direction, and the aircraft can be programmed in mid-flight to follow the camera's sights.
There is also a forward-looking, wide-angle camera mounted in the UAV's nose from which the "pilot" can fly by the seat of his pants.
The launch area is currently located on the Kabul base; the normal landing area will be even closer than the one used Thursday, once engineers complete their mine-clearing operation.
For now, Cross's flight patterns must be limited to ISAF's area of operations, surrounding Kabul. But if NATO finalizes plans to expand its mission in Afghanistan, they can be used virtually anywhere.
STEPHEN THORNE
© The Canadian Press, 2003
Photo by Iain
Canadian solders gather around the unmanned drone tested Thursday near Kabul as children look on. (CP/Stephen Thorne)