Flight of the Gray Eagle: How a Proven Platform Evolves
Much like the U.S. Army it supports, the Gray Eagle® Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) is constantly evolving.
Today's Gray Eagle 25M model and the Short Takeoff and Landing variant — known as Mojave STOL — are the most capable aircraft in their class anywhere in the world. Builder General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) has achieved this by building, brick by brick, atop the layers that came before.
Iterating on proven increments lets the Army and other users gain new levels of performance with the lowest amounts of risk. That's been the Gray Eagle story since the beginning. The aircraft earned its reputation during counterinsurgency operations while adapting to large-scale combat operations, demonstrating true transformation in contact — a top Army goal for both current and future requirements. The Gray Eagle continues to be a relevant asset deployed in every area of conflict with U.S. or coalition Soldiers.
The first aircraft grew out of the original Predator®. The Army sought a new unmanned aircraft to support Commanders' battlefield needs during the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. But the new platform, initially nicknamed the "Warrior," quickly took on its own identity.
The New Look
One reason was that the Gray Eagle did not have a turboprop engine. Instead, it flew with a heavy fuel piston aircraft engine that responded to the Army's concept for a single-fuel approach in the battlefield. This enabled the aircraft to burn either jet or diesel fuel, simplifying operational logistics.
Another reason was that the Gray Eagle was purpose designed to be flown by an Army cadre of enlisted Soldiers. This didn't require traditional aircraft-style stick-and-rudder controls. Instead, Soldiers would use highly automated controls to fly the Gray Eagle from a laptop or similar hardware. These automated controls would enable Soldiers to streamline workloads, improve decision-making, and boost efficiency across flight and sensor operator functions.
Gray Eagle would take off and land automatically through secure line-of-sight links with no need for operator interaction. It conducted missions beyond line of sight via satellite communications, providing the Army with multiple command and control options in contested environments. Gray Eagles have recorded hundreds of thousands of these automatic takeoffs and landings, demonstrating advanced levels of automation and autonomy.
The success of the Gray Eagle quickly induced the Army to support additional upgrades. An extended range model doubled the aircraft's range and endurance, thus providing the key discriminator for Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and Target Acquisition (RSTA) missions: persistence. It was the kind of game changing needed to provide wide-range support to combat theaters such as the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.
The ability to observe, report, detect, and affect threats both kinetically and non-kinetically, from a single platform, with the unblinking eye of an array of long-range sensors, is one of the keys to creating overmatch for ground forces. One test aircraft flew for nearly two days nonstop in a demonstration above Southern California, while others crisscrossed Eastern Europe, supporting Army and Joint RSTA missions and proving their ability to operate unimpeded by threat jamming in an operational theater.
While the Gray Eagle continued to improve, the Army continued to adapt to it, deploying the aircraft for whole new mission sets. The service began to pioneer the doctrine and systems for what is now known as manned-unmanned teaming, and paired Gray Eagle with the purpose-built AH-64E Apache attack helicopter. Crew members aboard these aircraft could seamlessly transmit and receive data from the Gray Eagle and even take control of the payloads, or the aircraft, if necessary.
Manned-unmanned teaming enables both aviation and ground forces to work together in ways that weren't possible before. A flight of Apaches might use Gray Eagles to observe distant targets to coordinate their approach. An infantry unit might guide one sensor to confirm a target. At the same time, the onboard synthetic aperture radar might detect inbound threat drones and send tracking data to a shooter — or Gray Eagle might employ its own onboard systems against the threat.
The Gray Eagle of Tomorrow, Today
Building on these practices is what has brought manufacturer GA-ASI to the newest and most capable variant: the Gray Eagle 25M.
With a brand-new heavy fuel engine, greater onboard power, significantly reduced maintenance, an advanced synthetic aperture radar, and other refinements, including an expeditionary laptop-based ground control station, Gray Eagle 25M epitomizes the Army's concept of transformation in contact and is the Gray Eagle the Army needs for the future fight.
Staying with manned-unmanned teaming, Gray Eagle 25M's modular open systems architecture incorporates rapid low-risk, low-cost integration of current and future applications, including a new breed of air-launched effects and long-range sensors. These additions increase the survivability of both the aircraft and the troops it supports while preserving all the multi-mission capabilities of the Gray Eagle.
Imagine the Army needs to close with a sophisticated adversary on a large battlefield. The enemy is defending its position with advanced air defense systems. Gray Eagle 25M approaches the forward line of troops, releasing one or more launched effects. These expendable, low-observable systems enable Division Commanders by collecting critical information, sniffing out the enemy's radars and affecting threats at any given moment or location without endangering the warfighter.
Once located — with Gray Eagle 25M acting as the quarterback for multiple launched effects relaying their findings — friendly aircraft, long-range fires, or other effects eliminate the air defense threat, permitting the maneuver elements to advance their attack harassed and potentially unobserved by threat-loitering sensors. When equipped with the EagleEye® synthetic aperture radar, Gray Eagle can detect and track threat drones well beyond current ground-based options in addition to detecting ground targets out to 80 kilometers and maritime targets out to 200 kilometers.
Gray Eagle 25M's other improvements include a high degree of electronic threat resilience, vision-based navigation in which onboard systems can recognize what the aircraft senses to counter GPS jamming, SATCOM anti-jam technologies, a new engine designed to reduce long-term costs, sustainment capacity, field service representatives, and spares along with an expeditionary laptop ground control element.
Gray Eagle 25M embraces the Army's modular open systems approach in which any number of sensors, effectors, or other payloads can integrate rapidly with the aircraft. This versatility allows Gray Eagle 25M to adapt at the speed of threats affordably. It has already proven its effectiveness by integrating multi-intelligence sensors in an operational theater against live threats and by utilizing the Army's new class of launched effects at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona.
Mojave STOL
The next-generation Mojave aircraft incorporates all the latest design improvements with another innovative twist: the ability to take off and land in much shorter distances on unimproved surfaces or ships at sea. This runway-independent platform allows Commanders to choose virtually any bases of operation and take advantage of unconventional locations not normally affiliated with unmanned aircraft or aviation operations as an added level of survivability and surprise.
Mojave caught the attention of the aerospace world a few years ago as it began logging aviation first after first as part of a company-funded program.
A transformational design that left traditional airfields and runways behind, Mojave's dirt field operations at GA-ASI's facilities in El Mirage, California, showcased its ability to take off and land in unprecedented short distances. Shortly after, the Mojave demonstrator proved a successful launch and recovery on a British aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, and from a Republic of Korea Dokdo-class amphibious assault ship — a critically relevant capability for the Pacific theater.
With the ability to perform RSTA as well as attack, contested logistics, and other missions, Mojave STOL demonstrates new flexibility in where and how U.S. and allied forces can operate to support the full spectrum of missions in large-scale combat operations.
Mojave STOL might go with American forces into an expeditionary base deep downrange, co-locating with them as necessary to support missions, including delivery of supplies, with the range to reach from island chain to island chain for units separate from the main body.
Operating from a semi-prepared landing zone, a dirt road, or any paved surface, it increases aircraft survivability and expands Commanders' options, giving them the ability to disburse and relocate operations without clogging Main Supply Routes with vehicles using only a conventional UH-60 helicopter.
The aircraft also might provide armed overwatch combined with logistics support for small units deployed in a maritime environment. Picture a detachment of Soldiers stationed on a small island where Mojave STOL makes regular flights to resupply and rearm without risk to a human aircraft crew — while also providing reconnaissance and, if necessary, armed response against hostile incursions.
The possibilities are endless, making it easy to envision more missions and capabilities on the horizon. The Army can get there because of its success building the Gray Eagle 25M as the backbone for the data links, avionics, and expeditionary ground control stations over time to achieve a ruggedized, reliable, relevant, and survivable multi-mission-capable platform with minimal impact to Doctrine, Organization, Training, Material, Leadership, Personnel, and Facilities (DOTMLPF), thus reducing time and cost to field, train, and employ.