“The involvement of the military massively augments our velocity on the commercial side because the military's expectation of an airplane is fundamentally the same as the FAA’s. They want a safe, reliable, repeatedly produced aircraft,” said BETA founder and CEO Kyle Clark.
“There's a transformative vertical lift industry that's emerging and we need to be partners in it," said AFWERX Director Col. Elliot Leigh.
“This isn't a thought experiment anymore," Lt. Col. Bryan Ralston said. "We've actually done something and seeing how it works and how we can adapt these technologies.”
“We can’t do our best work unless we’re involved a lot earlier,” said Mandy Long, CEO of BigBear.ai.
The company will use its sensor simulation software product Spectral, which can be used to “place sensors anywhere on a platform to visualize the sensor field of view, occlusion, and coverage,” Nicholas Pisciotta told Breaking Defense ahead of the contract announcement.
Under a new grant, the company will demonstrate to the Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center its ability to take very high resolution images at night using a thermal infrared sensor.
While the company currently is using already available data from satellites like NASA's Landsat and ESA's Sentinel-2, Hydrosat also intends to launch its own constellation of 16 microsats to low Earth orbit (LEO).