Madrid. 13 December 2023. Airbus engineers have developed a new solution which monitors the condition of drones and fighter jets and also indicates whether they are able to complete their mission. They tested the Live Health Monitoring System (LHMS) recently for the first time during a self-financed flight test campaign. The technology will support the development of the Future Combat Air System (FCAS).
In a total of three test flights on an Airbus Do-DT25 drone at the Andoya Space Test Range in Norway, LHMS recorded a range of status data, including the fuel system functionality and the condition of the aircraft structure. The system also assessed the potential risk of the malfunction of a mission critical component such as the power distribution system, displaying it in a so-called Mission Criticality Index (MCI). This enabled Airbus engineers at the LHMS ground station to detect induced anomalies in real time and assess the likelihood of whether the drone would be successful in a real mission.
Following the successful flight test campaign, the engineers of the Airbus Defence and Space Research & Technology Development department will now further mature LHMS: improving the prediction algorithms, integrating AI-based decision support and ensuring that the solution can also be used in environments and scenarios with networked drones and fighter jets.
This means that LHMS could, in the future, also be used in the FCAS, where a New Generation Fighter (NGF) and Remote Carrier (RC) drones will form the Next-Generation Weapon System (NGWS) and be networked with other systems on the ground, at sea, in the air, in space and in cyberspace via a data cloud. LHMS could improve the reliability of all flying platforms involved by providing a detailed picture of their condition, combined with a forecast of how their condition will develop and taking current and planned missions into account. In addition, they could take off again more quickly for the next sortie after missions.
