DreamHammer will begin a general rollout of its platform-agnostic Ballista software in August. The commercial off-the-shelf product will enable a user to control multiple unmanned systems of different makes from a single device.

Ballista is a cost-effective capability that has been long sought by the US military, but frustrated by the tendency of defence contractors to build specialised controllers, Nelson Paez,DreamHammer CEO, toldIHS Jane's .

"A lot of folks offering control systems make one available that only works with their particular vehicle," Paez said. "It's a turnkey solution."

By contrast, Ballista runs like a Microsoft Windows operating system that allows a PC to work with any device without compromising intellectual property. Whether it is an iRobot PackBot or a General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper, Ballista's application programming interface can access that system, he said.

Since August 2011, DreamHammer has licensed Ballista on a limited basis to select US military offices - in particular the US Navy's Program Executive Office (PEO) Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons, PEO command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence, and supporting warfighting labs.

"We've been focusing on the navy because they deal with all domains," Paez explained. "We're talking everything from satellites to subsurface vehicles."

The company has also been collaborating with the Pentagon's UAS Control Systems (UCS) Working Group charged with advancing unmanned aircraft interoperability. DreamHammer has also been offering top-tier UAV manufacturers and system integrators a beta version of Ballista for testing and evaluation.

Paez said the companies have been very interested in the open software controller, in part because of the new post-sequestration programme requirements.

"The defence industrial base is there to win programmes, and to win those programmes they must have an interoperable capability," he said, citing the navy's Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike drone as a programme with such a requirement.

DreamHammer is not the only company grouping disparate platforms under one control system. QinetiQ North America, for example, offers the Tactical Robot Controller, a device that can run all of the company's ground robots plus a limited number of small air assets, such as Raven, Switchblade, and T-Hawk.

Likewise, Northrop Grumman has been developing its own hardware. The Mission Management Control System was successfully tested on an RQ-4 Global Hawk in February 2013.

Still, Paez considers QinetiQ and Northrop Grumman potential customers, not rivals, because it is in their own interest to buy fromDreamHammer. Ballista is an already existing universal, multi-domain solution, he explained, so "it would be faster and cheaper to licence Ballista than to build a whole new system."

Publication: JANES International Defence Review
Author: Erik Schechter
Section: UNMANNED SYSTEMS
Date: 2013-07-22