LUNA Aerial Reconnaissance and Surveillance UAV, Germany
Posted on 11 July, 2009
LUNA is a lightweight medium range reconnaissance and surveillance UAV system that has been in service with the German Army since March 2000. This has done more than 1000 flight missions and has been successfully deployed in Kosovo, Macedonia and Afghanistan. The LUNA (Luftgestützte Unbemannte Nahaufklärungs Ausstattung) unmanned air reconnaissance system produced by the EMT is based in Penzberg, Germany.
LUNA is operated by a crew of two operators with the launch and recovery teams of two, and transported by small vehicles or aircraft. A typical system includes ten air vehicles, two catapult launcher and two vehicle mounted ground control station (GCS). German Army in the system, the ground control station is mounted either in a shelter or light truck built in Wolf 4×4 jeep. An armored duro 6×6 all terrain vehicle has been used as a GCS for NATO’s winter training in Norway.
Reconnaissance and surveillance mission flight plan and can preprogramed into the air before the launch vehicle, and can be changed during the flight.
The launch was by 6m rail, throwing a light bungee folded for transportation. The time between reaching the first launch of the launch site is less than 30 minutes. Air vehicle recovery and launch takes less than 15min and involves installing a parachute can be reused and exchanged the fuel cartridge can be reused.
Microwave communications link tracking and image data transmission system in real-time from the air vehicle to the ground station. Flight monitored and controlled from the virtual cockpit.
Recovery is by parachute. 4m/sec descent speed. Impact damper on the fuselage touchdowns protect against damage. As an alternative to the mine management or in the mountains, the recovery is by plane into a clean air vehicle recovery.
AIR VEHICLES
Very small air vehicles, with a wing span of 4.17m and 2.28m long. Take-off weight of 37kg. Plane and the wings made of glass fiber epoxy composite.
Air vehicle avionics suite includes fully autopilot and digital flight management system. The attitude gyroscope sensor covers, turn rate sensor, magnetic compass, air data sensors and accelerometers. Vehicles using the differential global positioning system navigation and datalink autotracking. This system also uses dead reckoning navigation system backup through the calculation of range and azimuth data.
ENGINE
A two-cylinder, two-stroke engine rated at 5.0kW installed on the aircraft. Engine drivers drive three-bladed propeller fold. The operator can choose to turn off your vehicle engine so that air can reach out and wander over the target area in silence. Engine is restarted when the air vehicle left the target area to continue the reconnaissance mission, or to go back to basics.
DataLink
Microwave link to the tracking of air vehicles to operate in C-band. Command uplink and downlink operate on 5MHz analog / 10.7Mbit / s digital. Radio systems automatically distribute recontact procedures after the loss of signal. This system uses frequency hopping and a video decoder and digital scrambler available as options.
The datalink range of 80km. The range is expanded with the spread of air or ground relays.