Heterogeneous Airborne Reconnaissance Team (HART)
Northrop Grumman is developing HART (Heterogeneous Airborne Reconnaissance Team), a low-cost, web-based control system that autonomously manages a network of reconnaissance aircraft to deliver timely intelligence information to U.S. Army soldiers.
The HART program is managed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory serves as the technical and contracting agent.
Northrop Grumman has successfully demonstrated HART’s capabilities for the U.S. Army on several occasions, beginning in April 2007. The exercises show how HART can control combinations of manned and unmanned Army aircraft already in the service inventory to send essential tactical data to soldiers in real time.
HART manages numerous unmanned reconnaissance aircraft as they collect video imagery to support combat operations. Soldiers use handheld computers to request images of suspected enemy positions. The system either dynamically retrieves the information from a catalog of geo-registered images or directs the most suitable sets of aircraft to collect updated target data. Requested information is displayed on the soldiers’ handhelds within minutes after the request is issued.
HART can simultaneously control multiple "tiers" of reconnaissance aircraft flying as high as 6,000 feet and scanning areas as far away as 100 miles from the combat zone, to those as low as 100 feet over the immediate combat area.
Using a software interface, HART links a variety of different aerial platforms to build a unified picture of the combat area for the warfighters' use. Aircraft used in the demonstrations include unmanned aerial systems of various sizes such as Shadow, Warrior, ScanEagle, Hunter, Pointer, Raven and Wasp. HART could also be used with larger systems such as Global Hawk, Predator, Fire Scout and X 47B Unmanned Combat Air System.
HART offers a low-cost way to link many dissimilar platforms into one seamless reconnaissance team without modifying either the UAVs or their ground control stations. HART technologies have been focused on military missions to this point, but they have potentially broader use in applications such as border patrol and law enforcement.
HART is another example of Northrop Grumman's world-class systems integration capabilities that enable a variety of military users to exchange real-time information on tactical, ad-hoc networks.