United KIngdom certifies Protector remotely piloted aircraft

The UK's Military Aviation Authority has issued a Military Type Certificate (MTC) to the Royal Air Force's Protector RG Mk1 uncrewed aircraft, also designated the MQ-9B. This certifies that the aircraft has passed an airworthiness assessment and verifies that it's safe to operate without geographic restrictions, including over populous areas. GA-ASI is the first manufacturer of large, unmanned aircraft to receive an MTC based on rigorous compliance with STANAG 4671, the NATO standard for unmanned aircraft system airworthiness.

Obtaining the MTC has been a goal of GA-ASI since the inception of the MQ-9B in January 2014. The company took its UAS platform, the MQ-9A, and added performance-enhancing features while ensuring that the design was capable of meeting NATO's STANAG 4671 Edition 2 airworthiness requirements. To meet those requirements, the aircraft incorporates enhancements. These include lightning protection, fire protection, anti-icing systems, and a fatigue-and-damage-tolerant building block design approach. All flight critical software and related equipment was designed in compliance with DO-178C/254. This means, for instance, that mission software is rigidly separated from flight-critical software.

"Earning an MTC for MQ-9B was a herculean effort and a seminal achievement for our company," said GA-ASI CEO Linden Blue. "We invested over $500 million as part of an 11-year effort to develop an unmanned aircraft that meets NATO's rigorous airworthiness standards. This included three flight test aircraft, full component and system-level environmental testing to DO-160G and applicable Mil-Standards, full scale static test airframe test to ultimate ground and flight loads, bird strike, hail protection and full-scale fatigue testing to three lifetimes (3x 40,000 notional aircraft flight hours = 120,000 hours total). Our engineers developed over 140,000 pages of detailed technical data verifying that the MQ-9B met those demanding requirements. I congratulate our team for this outstanding accomplishment, and I know our customers need this type certification, which will open civil airspace for their flight operations."

The Royal Air Force continues to take delivery of new Protector aircraft at their home at RAF Waddington. The UK has received 10 aircraft of the 16 it has ordered. The MQ-9B is a medium-altitude, long-endurance UAS. MQ-9B includes the SkyGuardian and SeaGuardian models and the Protector, operated by the RAF. In addition to the UK, GA-ASI has MQ-9B orders from Belgium, Canada, Poland, Japan Coast Guard, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF), Taiwan, India, and the U.S. Air Force USAF) in support of the Special Operations Command.

(article source: General Atomics / editor: Anton van Rijsbergen)
(image source: General Atomics)