Honeywell and Enigma Aerospace Collaborate onr Phoenix UAS Mission Systems Integration

Hon­ey­well Aero­space and Enig­ma Aero­space have signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing to explore inte­grat­ing advanced mis­sion sys­tems onto Enigma’s Phoenix Series autonomous unmanned air­craft sys­tem (UAS).

The agree­ment focus­es on enhanc­ing the Phoenix platform’s capa­bil­i­ties for oper­a­tion in con­test­ed envi­ron­ments, includ­ing GPS-denied and com­mu­ni­ca­tions-degrad­ed set­tings. The col­lab­o­ra­tion will exam­ine Honeywell’s nav­i­ga­tion, mis­sion sys­tems, and elec­tron­ic war­fare tech­nolo­gies.

Key areas of inter­est include resilient posi­tion­ing, nav­i­ga­tion and tim­ing (PNT), alter­na­tive nav­i­ga­tion, defen­sive elec­tron­ic war­fare, secure com­mand and con­trol com­mu­ni­ca­tions, defen­sive cyber sys­tems, and small form-fac­tor mis­sion pay­loads.

Ini­tial eval­u­a­tions will test Honeywell’s Ver­saWave SATCOM unit, Ground Con­trol Sta­tion, and ONEBOX flight con­troller on the Phoenix air­craft, with poten­tial expan­sion to addi­tion­al sys­tems.

The Phoenix is designed as a run­way-inde­pen­dent autonomous logis­tics air­craft for con­test­ed-logis­tics mis­sions. Enig­ma aims to sup­port both mil­i­tary and even­tu­al com­mer­cial logis­tics needs in chal­leng­ing oper­a­tional con­di­tions.

Matt Milas, Pres­i­dent of Defense and Space at Hon­ey­well Aero­space, empha­sized the impor­tance of robust nav­i­ga­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and elec­tron­ic war­fare sys­tems for autonomous plat­forms in con­test­ed envi­ron­ments. Reese Moz­er, CEO of Enig­ma Aero­space, high­light­ed the need for sys­tems that can oper­ate effec­tive­ly when tra­di­tion­al aids are dis­rupt­ed.

The com­pa­nies plan to pur­sue joint devel­op­ment activ­i­ties with the goal of deliv­er­ing capa­bil­i­ties to U.S. and allied defense cus­tomers in com­pli­ance with applic­a­ble reg­u­la­tions. Fur­ther details on time­lines or spe­cif­ic inte­gra­tion mile­stones were not dis­closed.

Thomas Sleightholm

Thomas is a con­tent writer for eVTOL Insights, cov­er­ing all aspects of the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. Got a sto­ry for him? Please send an email to editorial@evtolinsights.com

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