Menet Aero’s Intrepid tethered UAS platforms supported soldiers from across the 10th Mountain Division during multiple Hunter-Electromagnetic Spectrum exercises from August 2023 to May 2024. The Hunter EMS exercise series aimed to enhance soldiers’ capabilities to respond and adapt to adversary electronic countermeasures appropriately by combining kinetic and non-kinetic effects in the modern theater of war.
The Intrepid systems supported exercises held at Fort Drum, New York, and the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Johnson, Louisianna, by elevating full motion video (FMV), electronic surveillance (ES), and digital communications payloads simultaneously at multiple locations. By incorporating the aerial line of sight capabilities provided by lifting the payloads 300 feet above ground, the Intrepid systems enabled use of an MPU5 mesh network to communicate over far greater distances than possible using ground line of sight – from 1-3 km for ground-based line of sight communications to more than 140 km.
Exercise participants reported that deployment of low altitude, air-based UAS platforms that are agile, and modular, can provide reliable long-range, high-bandwidth communication at the tactical edge, and Its electronic surveillance, digital communications, and full motion video capability added tremendous value across the division.
Check out this video from the JRTC event: