General Atomics Mojave Aircraft - "We haven't conducted any live-fire tests, and currently have no near-term plans to do so," he said. "But we do foresee the Mojave as a weapons truck for future conflicts in austere environments. Could that mean gun pods? Maybe. The future remains unwritten."
Hellfire is certainly the weapon most associated with GA-ASI's drones, especially the Predator, Reaper, and Gray Eagle product lines. The company has integrated or otherwise demonstrated a number of other munitions as options for its various drone designs, including the stealthy Avenger, over the years, too.
General Atomics Mojave Aircraft
These have included laser-guided Paveway and GPS/INS-guided Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) bombs and AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. Precision-guided weapons, in general, are the most common armament for similarly sized drones in service around the world.
Next Step In Uas Capability Evolution Includes Stol And Unmatched Payload Capacity
SAN DIEGO – 09 December 2021 – General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) is unveiling a new Unmanned Aircraft System called Mojave, named for one of the harshest and most austere areas in the world, where deadly rattlesnakes and horned lizards adapt to survive the extreme forces of nature.
Mojave provides options for forward-basing operations without the need for typical airport runways or infrastructure. It can land and take off from unimproved surfaces while also retaining significant advantages in endurance and persistence over manned aircraft.
These innovations make Mojave the perfect UAS to perform armed overwatch, attack and armed reconnaissance missions. These issues might be less pronounced when employing Mojave, specifically, as an armed overwatch platform in support of low-footprint special operations missions in largely permissive environments.
GA-ASI has made it clear that this was a core mission set it had in mind for this unmanned aircraft when development started, although its overall vision has expanded significantly since then. The inclusion of gun pods on Mojave would indicate that it possesses enhanced situational awareness for its operators, which would fit with the type's more independent concept of operations.
It's also possible that new software has been developed to safely execute strafing runs on specified geolocated targets. "We're proud to bring these extraordinary capabilities to our Predator line of UAS," said GA-ASI CEO Linden Blue.
"We are providing the ground force with a long-endurance, armed overwatch UAS that can quickly reload weapons at austere sites, located close to the conflict zone. This revolutionary design, based on seven million flight hours of UAS experience, increases expeditionary employment options
— making Mojave a real game-changer." Payload capacity is 3,600 lbs. (1,633 kg) and Mojave can carry up to 16 Hellfire or equivalent missiles. Mojave can be equipped with a sensor suite including Electro-optical/Infrared (EO/IR), Synthetic Aperture Radar/Ground Moving Target Indicator (SAR/GMTI) and Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) to support land or maritime missions.
"The point of the photo is really to inspire discussion. Mojave offers some pretty revolutionary flight capabilities, in terms of short-field and unimproved surface advantages," he continued. "Specific weapon configurations would be driven by customer requirements. We're not specifically testing gun pods, but we certainly could."
"We're proud to bring these extraordinary capabilities to our Predator line of UAS," said GA-ASI CEO Linden Blue. "We are providing the ground force with a long-endurance, armed overwatch UAS that can quickly reload weapons at austere sites, located close to the conflict zone.
This revolutionary design, based on 7 million flight hours of UAS experience, increases expeditionary employment options – making Mojave a real game changer.” It's not clear where GA-ASI might be in flight testing Mojave with gun pods, or any other weapons, and whether any live-fire testing has been conducted.
A test plan, dated September 2021, that the company filed with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and that was subsequently posted online by an independent researcher, says that "flights may be conducted with the aircraft in a captive carry weapons configuration," but that "the captive carry 'weapons' will be inert mass simulators"
and that "no launches or releases of weapons/stores will be conducted from the Mojave UA [unmanned aircraft] under Experimental Certification authority." Regardless podded Miniguns could be a useful addition to the drone's armament mix in various scenarios.
Guns, as compared to bombs or missiles, can provide a way to better focus fire on smaller targets or groups of targets, as well as shift that fire more readily from one set of targets to the next.
This could all be particularly valuable for engaging threats in dense urban areas or that otherwise might be dangerously close to friendly forces or innocent bystanders on the ground. When GA-ASI first publicly unveiled the Mojave in December, the company put significant emphasis on the drone's ability to carry up to 16 Hellfire missiles, but also stressed that it could be armed with other weapons depending on a particular customer's requirements.
The Mojave has been in development for around two and a half years now as a private venture. Mojave is based on the avionics and flight control systems of MQ-9 Reaper and MQ-1C Gray Eagle-ER but is focused on short-takeoff and landing (STOL) capabilities and increased firepower.
It features enlarged wings with high-lift devices, and a 450-HP turboprop engine. A gun pod, especially one loaded with a weapon like a Minigun chambered to fire the relatively small 7.62x51mm cartridge, imposes not-insignificant limitations on the general flight profile of the aircraft carrying it.
To be as effective as possible, it must be employed at ranges that put that platform much closer to the target. "We were hoping there'd be an unmanned part to the Armed Overwatch [program], we haven't given up on that," David Alexander, GA-ASI's President, told The War Zone and other reporters during a call ahead of the
official reveal of Mojave last year. "I think it's a mistake not to include an unmanned aspect to that program." The Mojave project brings together all the best of the proven technologies for employment, sustainment and production and the ability to achieve industry-leading reliability, range and endurance.
STOL capability increases the number of employment options available to Mojave, potentially including aircraft carrier-based options, unlocking naval missions or sea-based support for special operations forces. Mojave is based on the avionics and flight control systems of MQ-9 Reaper and MQ-1C Gray Eagle-ER but is focused on short-takeoff and landing (STOL) capabilities and increased firepower.
It features enlarged wings with high-lift devices, and a 450-HP turboprop engine. Mojave provides options for forward-basing operations without the need for typical airport runways or infrastructure. It can land and take off from unimproved surfaces while also retaining significant advantages in endurance and persistence over manned aircraft.
These innovations make Mojave the perfect UAS to perform armed overwatch, attack and armed reconnaissance missions. GA-ASI's history in UAS technology is second to none and is continuously pushing technologies to adapt to emerging threats. Predator-series UAS have evolved since their support of the U.S.
war effort following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 to become not only a critical provider of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR), but also provide kinetic and non-kinetic capabilities to neutralize threats and achieve overmatch. December 09, 2021 08:00 ET
| Source: General Atomics General Atomics At the same time, the emphasis in the past on arming drones like Mojave with precision-guided munitions has been driven in no small part due to the vulnerability of those platforms to ground fire.
Beyond that, the ability to engage threats while flying at higher altitudes offers a way for unmanned aircraft to try to avoid detection by personnel on the ground, which can be important when engaging time-sensitive or fleeting targets.
Dillon Aero's gun pod is a self-contained system with its own internal power source for the electrically-driven Minigun inside, as well as a magazine holding 3,000 rounds of 7.62x61mm ammunition. In this podded configuration, the six-barrel Gatling-type machine gun is set to fire at a rate of 3,000 rounds per minute.
General Atomics has released a new picture of its experimental Mojave unmanned aircraft armed with a variety of weapons, including a pair of Dillon Aero gun pods, each with a single fast-firing Minigun. This would appear to be at least one of the first known instances of a gun pod of any kind being integrated onto an armed drone in this general size and weight class.
It's certainly an interesting weapon option for an unmanned platform intended to support expeditionary and distributed operations, including special operations forces, from austere sites with semi-improved surfaces serving as runways. "Gun pods have been around for a long time, and we've been building UAS for three decades, so certainly the idea of putting gun pods on our aircraft have been discussed in various situations over the years," C. Mark Brinkley, GA
-ASI's Senior Director of Marketing & Strategic Communications, told The War Zone in a statement. "Laser-guided munitions have always been the preferred strike option, for various reasons, and remain so today. That doesn't mean we should rule out the idea of a gun pod for future UAS [unmanned aircraft systems] missions, including Armed Overwatch
-type missions." The War Zone has reached out to GA-ASI for more information about the work that it has already done to add Dillon's gun pods as an armament option for Mojave, as well as how it sees those weapons being employed in an operational context.
These weapons are certainly an interesting and unexpected addition to the arsenal of the company's newest drone. Payload capacity is 3,600 lb. (1,633 kg) and Mojave can carry up to 16 Hellfire or equivalent missiles. Mojave can be equipped with a sensor suite including Electro-optical/Infrared (EO/IR), Synthetic Aperture Radar/Ground Moving Target Indicator (SAR/GMTI) and Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) to support land or maritime missions.
The Mojave project brings together all the best of the proven technologies for employment, sustainment and production and the ability to achieve industry-leading reliability, range and endurance. STOL capability increases the number of employment options available to Mojave, potentially including aircraft carrier-based options, unlocking naval missions or sea-based support for special operations forces.
SAN DIEGO, Dec. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) is unveiling a new Unmanned Aircraft System called Mojave, named for one of the harshest and most austere areas in the world, where deadly rattlesnakes and horned lizards adapt to survive the extreme forces of nature.
"Multi-Domain Operations and Armed Overwatch employment offer several scenarios where gun pods are a complementary armament option, alongside larger, more kinetic solutions," Brinkley added in response to a specific question about how a gun pod-armed Mojave might be employed.
"We take precision and limiting collateral effects seriously, as do our customers, so the question of when, where, or how gun pods could be best employed remains to be answered." GA-ASI's history in UAS technology is second to none and is continuously pushing technologies to adapt to emerging threats.
Predator-series UAS have evolved since their support of the U.S. war effort following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 to become not only a critical provider of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR), but also provide kinetic and non-kinetic capabilities to neutralize threats and achieve overmatch.
Beyond all this, it's not immediately clear how an operator would employ a gun pod-armed Mojave remotely, to begin with. Strafing targets on the ground, especially with a 7.62x51mm gun system, requires dynamic maneuvering close to the ground and a different level of situational awareness than most man-in-the-loop unmanned platforms, like those in GA-ASI's other product lines,
are generally understood to be capable of. That has been a key reason for the focus on precision-guided munitions, which have a very different basic concept of employment and are usually employed at medium altitudes. The Mojave drone, the only one of which has been built so far, that you can read more about here, is seen in the photograph fitted with six underwing pylons, in total, three under each wing.
The gun pods are on the outboard stations, with the other four pylons each having a single dual-rail missile launcher. Those launchers appear to be loaded with a mix of AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, with their characteristic overall black paint jobs, and gray-painted weapons that may be newer AGM-179A Joint Air-to-Ground Missiles (JAGM).
General Atomics-Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI), an affiliate of General Atomics, is a leading designer and manufacturer of proven, reliable remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) systems, radars, and electro-optic and related mission systems, including the Predator® RPA series and the Lynx
® Multi-mode Radar. With more than seven million flight hours, GA-ASI provides long-endurance, mission-capable aircraft with integrated sensor and data link systems required to deliver persistent flight that enables situational awareness and rapid strike. The company also produces a variety of ground control stations and sensor control/image analysis software, offers pilot training and support services, and develops meta-material antennas.
For more information, visit www.ga-asi.com, @GenAtomics_ASI on Twitter or LinkedIn. All told, the gun pod armament option certainly makes the drone look like an unmanned competitor to lightly armed helicopters, such as the AH-6 Little Birds that the U.S.
Army's elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) flies, or light fixed-wing attack aircraft like the ones that Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) is evaluating as part of its Armed Overwatch program. General Atomics-Aeronautical Systems, Inc.
(GA-ASI), an affiliate of General Atomics, is a leading designer and manufacturer of proven, reliable remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) systems, radars, and electro-optic and related mission systems, including the Predator® RPA series and the Lynx ® Multi-mode Radar.
With more than seven million flight hours, GA-ASI provides long-endurance, mission-capable aircraft with integrated sensor and data link systems required to deliver persistent flight that enables situational awareness and rapid strike. The company also produces a variety of ground control stations and sensor control/image analysis software, offers pilot training and support services, and develops meta-material antennas.
For more information, visit www.ga-asi.com.
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