Menet Aero Intrepid tethered unmanned aircraft system supported a wildland firefighting UAS integration exercise at Crowder Lake near Weatherford, Oklahoma, Sept. 25-26. Exercise participants included the Oklahoma National Guard, Southwestern Oklahoma State University, Oklahoma Highway Patrol, Weatherford Fire Department and private industry organizations including Menet Aero.
The exercise combined Menet Aero’s Intrepid tethered UAS with free-flight UAS technologies during multi-agency event response. Supplementing UAS with TeUAS enables persistent situational awareness, which improves the common operating picture of the incident commander and exercise participants while reducing workload.
The Intrepid carried a Trellisware TW-135 HPR and flew continuously at 300 feet above the ground throughout the 2-day exercise, enabling communication by individuals on the ground, operating the free flight UAS, and helicopter crews. Menet and Trellisware were able to build on integration efforts completed earlier this year with the TW-135 HPR and again prove how crucial TeUAS is to multi-agency disaster response efforts.
“The Intrepid with the TW-135 HPR payload was crucial for keeping exercise participants in communication and building the common operating picture that exercise needed to coordinate activities and fight the notional wildland fire,” said Peter Menet, Founder & CTO of Menet Aero. “Our Intrepid system was in the air virtually the whole time, and expanded communication range of participants to more than 25 miles when aloft. The few times it did land during breaks, exercise participants noted a significant decrease in communications and situational awareness by event leaders, proving again just how critical TeUAS are to expanding the communication bubble during critical disaster response activities.”
This exercise built upon efforts earlier in the year to integrate the TW-135 HPR on to the Menet Aero Intrepid system.