partners
Aerospace Manufacturing-Aerospace Welding
Aerospace Welding (AWI) is a trusted leader in precision welding and manufacturing of aerospace products, and is the largest FAA repair station for exhaust and engine mounts and has over 400 PMA components.
Our experience makes us a leading provider of original equipment, aircraft parts, weldments, mandrel bending, stainless tube bending, metal fabrication, painting and coating quality machined components. The company provides engineering services, design assistance, prototype and short and long run production for the following areas:
guided systems technologies, inc.
(GST) has over 25 years of service to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the aerospace industry. The company offers a full range of aerospace design, engineering, prototyping, manufacturing, test and operational support services with special emphasis on VTOL systems and the disciplines of navigation, guidance and control. It also offers a line-up of fully-integrated autonomous unmanned helicopter systems for industrial applications through commercial partnership with VersaTOL, LLC.
GST has extensive expertise and experience in the automation of rotorcraft. Early programs included flight control hardware and software development for the U.S. Army/NASA Free Flight Rotorcraft Research Vehicle (FFRRV), as well as the U.S. Army Autonomous Scout Rotorcraft Testbed (ASRT). Other automated rotorcraft programs include an unmanned tilt rotor for the Korean Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), and flight automation hardware and software for the USAF/AV Skytote compound coaxial Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) technology demonstrator. GST currently provides the automation solution and technical support for the production V-10E all-electric unmanned helicopter system. This vehicle is used routinely in law enforcement and other civil and commercial applications. GST also manufactures several fully-automated unmanned helicopter systems, including the V-75 which was designed to simultaneously host both a synthetic aperture radar and a stabilized EO/IR payload.
Guided Systems has extensive experience in the design, automation and operation of tethered rotorcraft. This includes the automation and integration of a maritime towed autogyro system for L3. This system is pictured to the right on approach to a guided landing on a small raised landing pad on the Stilleto naval vessel. Guided Systems provided the team with analysis of rotor system performance, working prototypes, and the flight automation solution. GST performed extensive experimental work to validate the models, the controller, and the operational strategy for automated tethered flight that was ultimately used to successfully demonstrate shipboard operations. Guided Systems is also actively engaged in the development and demonstration of a tethered VTOL Persistent ISR Platform known as Venom. Both gasoline-powered and all-electric variants are available at tether lengths up to 1,000 feet. Advanced capabilities include fully-automated on-the-move operations while tethered to another moving vehicle (e.g. ground vehicle or surface vessel).
Most relevant to the program, GST has expertise and experience in the modeling, simulation, automation, and flight test of autogyro vehicles. GST customized an avionics and software solution for a technology demonstrator of the Slowed-Rotor Compound (SRC) vehicle type for AAI, and conducted flight test and demonstration of the vehicle as part of the recent DARPA Transformer Program. GST also recently served on the DARPA/Carter Aviation Tactically Exploited Reconnaissance Node (TERN) team and was responsible for design of the flight control system, flight automation logic, as well the system avionics suite and payload integration on the TERN demonstration vehicle. This program effort culminated in detailed study of fully-automated shipboard landing dispersion in high-fidelity simulation as a function of sea state (i.e. induced ship motion), and the perturbations caused by the ship airwake