Military

SPI'S UAV VALKYRIE WILL UNDERGO TEST FLIGHTS BEGINNING IN NOVEMBER 2009

Space Port Indiana's UAV the "Valkyrie" has been under development since 2008 and is nearing the taxi and flight test phase. The aircraft, which has a 35 pound payload weight, and a gross weight of under 100 pounds, is the most recent high tech undertaking of SPI. The aircraft will afford customers the opportunity to fly sensors, cameras and a host of other payloads for a period of up to 9 hours without refueling. The max airspeed of the vehicle will be nearly 140 mph and have interchangeable payload boxes that allow for bomb bays, rear deployment, and scatter deployment capabilities to name a few. The Valkyrie will be Indiana's first UAV built, tested and flown in Indiana and is design to give DHS and other agencies the flexibility to fly an unmanned vehicle to view disaster areas, map the state of Indiana, or provide continuous security if necessary. The Valkyrie also provides the best interoperability with existing technologies that can be mounted or installed on the aircraft. Customers can use their own technology or we can provide it. " It's a little like going to Aspen to ski", says Space Port President Brian Tanner,  " you can rent your skis or bring along your own and still have the ultimate experience". The Valkyrie is expected to be ready for demo flights before the end of 2009 and ready for production by spring of 2010. SPI will also be looking for potential support team members to operate the system, and is intent on finding Indiana talent to do so.

Operational validation is a very important moment for our customers. If you’ve spent months, or even years making your product work in the lab, you have obviously invested a great deal of time and money. This is where the rubber meets the road (or in our case the technology meets the environment). It’s a high pressure moment, but we know how to get you through it.

In today’s military, there is a growing need to insure that what gets into the hands of our war fighters works every time and delivers the expected results. That’s not only true of weapons systems, but of all the supporting technologies fielded for battle or in peace time activities. You can only imagine the effect that failures have on critical missions. Our operational validation capabilities, give you an opportunity to see your product work in real time, under real conditions, and in most cases with real users.

Our ability to work with program offices in agencies like NASA, Army, Navy or even Coast Guard gives us a chance to put our technology, as well as yours, into a training environment that can yield data about your product and show where improvement might be needed. Through the use of Space Port Indiana™, for example, we can call up Army, Navy, Marine Corps or others to “game” with us and create an environment where products are used by military personnel and evaluated during an exercise. Let’s say we want to know how an optical sensor might improve situational awareness in an area of interest. We can deploy the sensor, relay the data to multiple locations and evaluate clarity, coverage area, and how close to real time we are gaining information. In some cases even re-direct the sensor to a new area very quickly.

The ability to have real users see the technology work is crucial to making it part of an arsenal of capabilities in a growing industry. Military is not our only customer. In many cases, commercial requirements are similar. The same sensors that help a soldier find the enemy helps fire departments find victims, police locate criminals and search and rescue teams find missing loved ones.

SPI can also offer a unique opportunity to train military personnel in air space management. Understanding the airspace through spectrum analysis of frequency, special use areas, military operating areas, popolution, and assets can be very beneficial. Our 3D representation of the air and ground space around our facility can provide useful information for those interested in urban operations, gaming, simulation, and mock operatons. This 3D representation includes Muscatatuck, Crane, JPG, North Vernon, Columbus and a great part of the Southern Indiana region.