UAV: Orion to challenge with 'extreme persistence'

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2010/08/16/346114/orion-to-challenge-with-extreme-persistence.html


A new kind of aircraft is poised to enter a crowded market for medium-altitude, fixed-wing surveillance aircraft, offering “extreme persistence” as its competitive trump card.

Virginia-based Aurora Flight Sciences plans to launch flight tests for the Orion unmanned aircraft system by the end of the year and demonstrate 120h, or five-day, endurance before October.

The Orion marks yet another expression of the Department of Defense’s desire to flood the skies over Afghanistan with never-ending surveillance coverage of virtually the entire country.

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The Orion does not seek to introduce extreme persistence at the cost of requiring liquid hydrogen, which as a fuel source has proved popular in high-altitude experiments, but is difficult to store and can be dangerous to handle.

Rather, Aurora’s medium-altitude alternative to a host of both manned and unmanned surveillance already clogging the market space relies on standard military aviation fuels to create energy