The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Office of Naval Research will work together to build mobile launch and recovery sites for unmanned aerial systems by using small vessels, PCB Design reported Friday.DARPA and ONR have inked a memorandum of agreement to develop concepts for operating long-endurance and long-range aircraft from small Navy ships, according to the report.
The Tactically Exploited Reconnaissance Node program aims to deploy intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems from ship decks, the report says.
“Ideally, this collaboration with ONR could serve as a model for similar agreements with all the services for other DARPA programs, and help create breakthrough capabilities for military users,†said Daniel Patt, DARPA program manager for the Tern program, according to the report.
Five vendors will work to minimize risks for the Tern system under the program’s first phase and final work covers full-scale development of Tern for ground and sea testing, PCB Design reports.
