The Zephyr S is an interesting aircraft, which falls, in the area between satellites and high altitude manned aircraft, and opens up interesting potential applications to civil and military related missions.

According to Airbus, the Zephyr S can provide a number of potential applications for users.

The Zephyr S is a solar-powered aircraft, providing a wide scope of applications, ranging for example from maritime surveillance and services, border patrol missions, communications, forest fire detection and monitoring, or navigation.

 Operating in the stratosphere at an average altitude of 70,000 feet / 21 kilometers, the ultra-lightweight Zephyr has a wingspan of 25 meters and a weigh of less than 75kg, and flies above weather (clouds, jet streams) and above regular air traffic, covering local or regional footprints. Ideally suited for “local persistence” (ISR/Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance), the Zephyr has the ability to stay focused on a specific area of interest (which can be hundreds of miles wide) while providing it with satellite-like communications and Earth observation services (with greater imagery granularity) over long periods of time without interruption.

 Not quite an aircraft and not quite a satellite, but incorporating aspects of both, the Zephyr has the persistence of a satellite with the flexibility of a UAV.

The only civil aircraft that used to fly at this altitude was Concorde and only the famous military U2 and SR-71 Blackbird could operate at similar levels.

The Zephyr successfully achieved several world records, including the longest flight duration without refueling.

https://www.airbus.com/newsroom/press-releases/en/2018/07/Zephyr-S-set-to-break-aircraft-world-endurance-record.html

Two recent updates on the Zephyr air vehicle have been recently provided by new release from Airbus Defence and Space.

The first dated July 25, 2018, highlighted the air vehicle’s launch to break the aircraft world endurance record.

Zephyr S, Airbus’ High-Altitude-Pseudo-Satellite, has surpassed the current flight endurance record of an aircraft without refueling of 14 days, 22 minutes and 8 seconds and continues to pioneer the stratosphere. 

The Zephyr aircraft departed for its maiden flight from Arizona, USA on 11th July 2018. 

This first flight of the Zephyr S aims to prove and demonstrate the aircraft capabilities, with the final endurance record to be confirmed on landing.

The second dated July 16, 2018 focused on the establishment of the first serial production facility for the Zephyr, which also highlights the working relationship between the UK with the company as well as the engagement of the US government as well:

The Zephyr S is the first production aircraft of the Zephyr programme, previous Zephyr units being Research and Development prototypes.

Zephyr is the world’s leading, solar–electric, stratospheric Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). It harnesses the sun’s rays, running exclusively on solar power, above the weather and conventional air traffic; filling a capability gap complimentary to satellites, UAVs and manned aircraft to provide affordable and persistent local satellite-like services.  

Named after the late Chris Kelleher, the inventor of Zephyr, the opening of production facilities is part of a significant focus by Airbus on the Zephyr programme. The Kelleher facility represents the first serial HAPS assembly line worldwide.  

“Today represents a significant milestone in the Zephyr programme. The facility is home to the world’s leading High-Altitude Pseudo Satellite and will be a showcase location, linking to our operational flight bases around the world.

“The Zephyr S aircraft is demonstrably years ahead of any other comparable system and I am beyond proud of the Airbus team for their unrivalled success. Today we have created a new future for stratospheric flight”, said Dirk Hoke, Chief Executive Officer of Defence and Space.

This programme milestone comes as the Zephyr aircraft is currently flying after having departed for its maiden flight from Arizona, USA a few days ago.

“This flight is being supported by both the UK and US governments and reflects the UK Ministry of Defence’s position as the first customer for this innovative and potentially game changing capability.  

This maiden flight of the Zephyr S aims to prove and demonstrate the aircraft capabilities, with a landing date to be confirmed once the engineering objectives have been achieved. Until today, the Zephyr aircraft has logged almost 1,000 solid hours of flying time. 

Added Sophie Thomas, Head of the Zephyr programme at Airbus: “Firstly, I would like to thank Defence Equipment & Support, the procurement arm of the UK MOD for their continued support of the Zephyr programme. Zephyr will bring new see, sense and connect capabilities to both military and commercial customers. Zephyr will provide the potential to revolutionise disaster management, including monitoring the spread of wildfires or oil spills. It provides persistent surveillance, tracing the world’s changing environmental landscape and will be able to provide communications to the most unconnected parts of the world.”

In future, Airbus will be flying Zephyr S from their new operating site at the Wyndham airfield in Western Australia. This has been chosen as the first launch and recovery site for the Zephyr UAV due mainly to its largely unrestricted airspace and reliable weather.  The site will be operational from September 2018.

An article by Steve Ranger from ZD Net published on July 18, 2018 highlighted the possibilities for the Zephyr S:

The Zephyr has a wingspan of 25 meters and is designed to operate in the stratosphere at an average altitude of 21 kilometers — above clouds, jet streams and ozone layer, as well as regular air traffic (apart perhaps, from the odd spy-plane). Airbus wants the drone to fly for 100 days without landing (its currently record is 14 days without refuelling) and travel up to 1,000 nautical miles per day. It weighs 75kg, but can support a payload up to five times its own weight.

The drone can be used for things like surveillance and reconnaissance — the UK’s Ministry of Defence has already bought several of the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). 

It could also be used to create a communication network either for civilian or military uses — Facebook recently cancelled its own plans to build high-altitude drones to deliver internet access in remote areas, but at the time said it would continue to work with partners like Airbus on such vehicles.

The Zephyr S is the first production model from the Zephyr programme; previous Zephyr aircraft were research and development prototypes; the drones will be built at a production line in Farnborough. 

Sophie Thomas, head of the Zephyr programme at Airbus told ZDNet: “The vision was there over ten years ago. What we’ve been waiting for and working on is the technology developments in different areas like battery technology and the the solar array — for that to be ready and available to the standard we need to make this a really viable product. That’s where we are today.”

Thomas said operating in the stratophere gives the drone two advantages over satellites: “The first is that you are much closer to the Earth, so you can get far higher-resolution imaging. Secondly for communications you get reduced latency. The beauty of it is we have an endurance that is really powerful, so we can persist for over 100 days, yet the flexibility of being able to retask.”

The UAV is significantly cheaper than satellites and the modular design can take different technology payloads, added Thomas.

 

 

 

Although most of the press attention to the Future Combat Air System has focused on the possibility of a new European fighter, if the FCAS is looked at as a template rather than a platform program, it is clear that Airbus Defence and Space is forging ahead.

The focus is upon working with the platforms they have developed and supporting but shaping ways to rework how these platforms can operate more effectively together as concepts of operations shift in the period ahead.

As the French Defense Procurement Agency or DGA put it with regard to FCAS:

“[The FCAS] will be a system of systems, with various networked platforms. There will not be one plane, but a mixed wing of piloted planes, reconnaissance drones or strike drones, hypersonic missiles and somewhere an AWACS or the successor of the AWACS.”

A4_Brochure_V5_Final

A recent article by Sandra Erwin of Space News highlighted the Airbus Defence and Space approach as seen in the “Network in the Sky” program.

A cyber-secure network of air, space and ground communications systems that delivers huge amounts of bandwidth anywhere in the world has been a long and frustrating pursuit of the U.S. military. 

 Defense contractors for years have floated ideas for how to build the elusive “combat cloud” bringing together the latest and greatest communications technology. But the challenge has been tougher than imagined.

 Airbus says it is a few steps closer to making it happen. 

 I sat down last week with David Kingdon Jones of Airbus Defense and Space at the Farnborough International Airshow outside London. He oversees a project called “Network for the Sky” that combines military and commercial technologies to form a single global mesh network. This would allow aircraft and other platforms to be part of a high-speed connected battle space.

 TURNING CONCEPT TO REALITY  

 It’s a complex project, and it’s important to separate aspiration from actuality, Kingdon Jones warned. The idea is to offer the same seamless experience that people have with their cellphone when it switches from one network to another or from 4G to Wi-Fi without realizing it, “but with the reliability and cybersecurity standards of military communications.” 

 Obviously this will not happen overnight but some of the pieces are starting to come together. An early version of a “combat cloud” that is interoperable between aircraft, satellites, command centers and units on the ground or at sea is being tested in Spain from an Airbus tanker aircraft. 

 HOW THIS THIS IDEA COME ABOUT 

 As the prime contractor for the U.K. military’s Skynet communications satellites, Airbus heard from officers in the field about their desire for more capable networks and information systems. “We need aircraft to be able to talk to each other, manage huge amounts of data,” said Kingdon Jones. “We won’t get there in one jump, or it would have been done already.”

 The “proof of concept” is running on an A330 multi-role tanker transport. The first full version of the network in the sky will be completed by the end of 2020. “Then you have to keep going for years,” he said.

 A network that connects the entire battle space will happen “incrementally.” David Kingdon Jones, program manager, Airbus Defense and Space says:

 “The A330 tanker has links to combat aircraft, connectivity to satellite links and the ability to relay information to piloted aircraft, drones and land forces. Airbus wants to work with all commercial satcom operators “whether they’re doing pure bandwidth services or managed services,” he said. “You have to be flexible. And a lot of industrial partnering is needed.”

 Will users have to buy new terminals to use this network?

 “It remains to be seen, said Kingdon Jones. “We’re trying to reuse legacy equipment as much as possible. And we’re interested in providing an interface into the rest of the network.”

 “The system will be offered to all NATO countries. The only user so far is the U.K. Ministry of Defence but there is still no “program of record.”

 The future of this network, like everything else in the defense business, depends on militaries making financial commitments for the long haul.

From the Space News Weekly Newsletter dated July 24, 2018.

An additional story by Angus Batey published by Aviation Week also highlighted the approach:

An ambitious secure communications network solution dubbed Network for the Sky has been launched by Airbus Defense & Space. NftS is a modular system-of-systems, incorporating both new and extant equipment with service and support.

The end goal is to enable customers to realize full, secure and seamless data exchange between different nodes in the network, regardless of whether they are on the ground or onboard aircraft, spacecraft or ships.

“There’s demand in the customer world for this vision of the connected battle space, and some increasingly sophisticated requirements,” says David Kingdon Jones, head of NftS at Airbus D&S. “Within Airbus we’ve got the real capabilities of the end-to-end aircraft building and support, and also satellite capabilities and secure military satcom. We put a program together in response to that customer demand, and that is Network for the Sky.”

NftS has been designed both to be built in to new programs from an early stage – Kingdon Jones notes that the project is aligned with the FCAS (future combat air system) collaboration announced earlier this year with Dassault – and to be easily applied to platforms and networks already in service.

“Network for the Sky is a modular, end-to-end communications solution, with elements that customers can buy all of or some of,” he says. “We use our integration skills to [fill] gaps that they’ve got with either services or systems that we bring to them.”

The “four pillars” of NftS are airborne equipment, such as modems and satcom antennae fielded onboard aircraft; airborne communications, such as Ka-band capacity from the Skynet satellite constellation, or the SpaceDataHighway, a future capability that will use laser connectivity to provide high-speed broadband; network services; and support services. The challenge is not just linking everything together coherently, but ensuring it remains an effective and compelling product over time.

This clearly is a foundation element for what Airbus Defence and Space refers to as FCAS.

Airbus Defence and Space described its “network in the sky” approach as follows:

Network for the Sky (NFTS) securely and reliably connects all your airborne assets together with the rest of your operations, giving you the communications superiority to execute the mission more efficiently and effectively. Delivering as one.

It operates over a mix of technologies to form one resilient, high-speed global network that supports the most advanced applications. It allows all mission participants – including joint and coalition forces – to communicate during the entire mission, giving you enhanced situational awareness for faster, better decision-making and rapid response through more synchronised operations.

 Network for the Sky is a solution from Airbus. We have unequalled breath of experience in aircraft, airborne communications systems and services – and bringing it all together into highly secure end-to-end solutions trusted by military and government customers.

And the Airbus press release at Farnbourgh dated July 13, 2018 further discussed the approach:

“Network for the Sky aims to offer the same seamless experience that people have with their mobile phone when it switches from one network to another or from 4G to Wi-Fi without realising it, but with the reliability and cybersecurity standards of military communications,” said David Kingdon-Jones, Head of NFTS at Airbus Defence and Space. “The difference is that, in the sky, it is not only the users who are mobile, but also the network, since aircraft themselves constitute the nodes of that network. Given their speed, two aircraft may only have a few seconds to exchange information that is critical for the mission.”

Today, individual aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and helicopters continue to operate on separate networks with limited interoperability between them and often little resilience. Their bandwidth is also usually insufficient for transferring large volumes of data. For example, on combat aircraft, Link 16 and UHF/VHF communication systems offer data rates of only a few kbit/s which is basically suited to voice communications and the exchange of position coordinates.

NFTS will integrate various technologies, such as satellite links with geostationary, medium and low Earth orbit constellations, tactical air-to-ground, ground-to-air and air-to-air links, voice links, 5G mobile communication cells and laser connections, into a single global secure network.

This intelligent network can be reconfigured at any time and prioritises exchanges based on data flows, mission objectives and available bandwidth on the different links.

The management of end-to-end, seamless connectivity will thus be transparent to users.

NFTS will also see the rollout of a new generation of communication terminals and antennas that can be perfectly integrated into the fuselage, capable of managing different frequency bands and remaining connected despite rapid manoeuvres by the aircraft.

Providing connectivity for the entire duration of air missions, the network will enable information superiority and extend the multi-mission capabilities of aircraft. Mission aircraft will be able to share in real-time applications and data stored on board via a combat cloud. It will be possible to re-task in-flight combat aircraft and helicopters from the ground by uploading updated mission plans, for example to strike targets of opportunity. It will also be possible to operate fleets of tactical UAVs in swarms. High-altitude platforms, such as Zephyr, will create permanent communication cells of several hundred kilometres in diameter in order to relay aircraft communications via Airbus’ SpaceDataHighway laser links.

NFTS is offered as a modular, end-to-end solution, with the first phase already available. This involves standardising the use of high-speed satellite connectivity on aircraft from this point onward thanks to a range of antennas which have the capability to switch from one satellite beam to another in-flight. Thus the V/UHF radio links and L16 can be extended via a satellite communication relay from a few hundred kilometres to thousands of kilometres.

Network for the Sky is the foundation for the connected airborne battlespace, with the objective to offer a full operational capability by 2020. The NFTS programme is part of Airbus’ Future Air Power project and is fully aligned with the development of the European Future Combat Air System (FCAS).