Airbus Helicopters and its partners have conducted a full-scale demonstration of a manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) system developed as part of a European Union-funded project codenamed MUSHER.
The demonstration took place in France and Italy from 30 September to 9 October 2024 and involved several manned helicopters and unmanned aerial systems (drones) connected to a single MUM-T network.
“Operating (manned) helicopters and unmanned aerial systems (drones) together provides valuable additional mission capabilities such as improved situational awareness with UAS (Airbus VSR700 drones) sharing real-time video for better decision-making, while safeguarding critical assets and resources,” said Bruno Even, CEO of Airbus Helicopters.
“The successful demonstration of MUSHER is a major step forward for our ambition at Airbus to deploy MUM-T capabilities by bringing together European industrial know-how for the benefit of military and civil customers,” he added.
The experiment was led by Airbus, which used FlightLab’s H130 helicopter as the manned platform and the VSR700 drone at the DGA test range. Leonardo conducted demonstrations with the helicopter and the pilotable vehicle. Thales, the MUSHER project coordinator, provided the mission control and briefing stations. Space Applications Services was responsible for the mission preparation station. Indra led simulation activities in preparation for the demonstration, while ONERA provided a crew workload study.
The MUSHER demonstration consisted of scenarios involving aircraft flying simultaneously over France and Italy. The missions were based on concepts of operation established by the French, Italian and Spanish Ministries of Defence.
One scenario, for example, showcased a VSR700 and a manned helicopter on an anti-piracy mission. The VSR700 was initially on a surveillance mission. Upon spotting suspicious activity on board, the manned helicopter would join the scene and take full control of the VSR700 in preparation for intervention.
The in-flight tests aimed to demonstrate interoperability levels (LOI) 2 to 4, from direct reception of VSR700 data by a manned helicopter and a ground station, to control and monitoring of the VSR700 from the helicopter.
The demonstration also served to prove that manned helicopters and VSR700s from different companies and countries, operating in distant regions, can be integrated into a single MUM-T system.
MUSHER is a project launched within the framework of the European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP) launched by the European Commission in December 2021. The project aims to develop a generic European MUM-T system that can operate robustly in a variety of environments (civil, military or mixed), while reducing crew workload and providing maximum operational capacity.