General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Incorporated George a/c announced on Thursday that have
demonstrated new capabilities of mq-9 B sky guardian drone that includes automatic takeoff
and landing over SATCOM rapid assessment and sharing of images captured by the drone among
others the demonstration was done on the 16th of August it includes new certifiable ground control
station C GCS automatic takeoff landing and taxi over SATCOM satellite communication portable pre
/ pause flight equipment the 3e and the mission intelligence center the flight originated from
Yuma Army Airfield in Arizona where the company crews flew sky Guardian to Nevada and required
no forward deployed across or ground control station GCS the flight received far clearance
to fly without a chase plane and landed using automatic takeoff and landing capability outlook
via said come data link it then taxied while still under satellite control from Yuma before
being turned over to Georgia NASA's portable pre / post flight equipment the 3e be three years a
laptop it allows a forward deployed maintainer to use automated pre-flight checklist to reduce
pre-flight times by up to 50% this capability reduces the airlift requirements by eliminating
the need for a forward deployed GCS George a C's mission intelligence station provides a suite of
intelligence products generated by the aircraft including the system for the tactical archival
retrieval and exploitation stare network enabled the Intel station allows for the
rapid assessment and sharing of imagery by the intelligence specialist assigned to the mission