US Army, General Atomics to upgrade Grey Eagle ELINT capability

An MQ-1C Gray Eagle UAS at Camp Taji, Iraq, before a surveillance mission in the Baghdad area. (US Army)

US Army officials have reached a deal with General Atomics to upgrade the electronic intelligence (ELINT) capabilities for the service's fleet of MQ-1C Grey Eagle unmanned aircraft systems (UAS).

The ELINT upgrade deal, announced on 15 April, will support long-range UAS sensing requirements for the MQ-1C as an enabler to the army's Integrated Air Defense System (IADS), General Atomics said in a 15 April statement.

Once fully integrated into the extended range (ER) variants of the MQ-1C fleet, the upgraded ELINT sensor platform is to enable army UAS “to operate outside threat ranges while looking deeply into the battlespace and enables advanced manned-unmanned teaming to increase survivability for crewed Army aircraft”, the company said.

Aside from supporting army-led IADS operations, the upgraded ELINT sensor is help Grey Eagle UAS detect “adversary IADS” at further ranges, the company noted.

The upgraded ELINT sensor enables detection and geo-location of “critical threats [against] joint force operations,” they added. To that end, the Gray Eagle ER played a prominent role in the most recent capstone exercise of the army's Project Convergence initiative.

During Project Convergence - Capstone 5 (PCC-5), Grey Eagle ER variants “performed persistent Detect, Identify, Locate, and Report (DILR) missions in an electronically contested environment, simultaneously providing mesh network aerial tier support to maneuver units and connecting the soldiers and launched effects that might otherwise be obstructed by terrain or be out of range”, according to the 15 April statement.