Textron Introduces Next-Generation Drone Station - Defensetech: Textron Inc. wants the Army and other military services to consider buying its new station designed to control multiple types of drones and other aircraft.
The company introduced the product, which is called Synturian and features large touch screen monitors and a portable stack of computers, at last week’s Association of the United States Army conference in Washington, D.C.
“It can scale from very small to large systems,” Wayne Prender, vice president of ground control technologies at the Providence, Rhode Island-based company, said during an interview with Military.com at the show.
The technology, in development for two years, has already been tested on an optionally-manned aircraft and works with the company’s own Aerosonde drone, Prender said.
But the goal is to expand the number of compatible systems to include such drones as Textron’s RQ-7B Shadow, as well as Northrop Grumman Corp’s RQ-5 Hunter, General Atomics’ MQ-1C Grey Eagle and Aurora Flight Service’s Orion — aircraft already controlled by the company’s Universal Ground Control Station, Prender said.
“We very much are platform agnostic,” he said.
