CIRA Centro Italiano Ricerche Aerospaziali has designed and patented one of the three stratospheric platforms that will be built and tested in flight as part of the EuroHAPS (High-Altitude Platform Systems) demonstration project, whose contract, worth 43 million euros, has just been signed by Thales Alenia Space.
EuroHAPS was selected by the European Commission in July 2022 following the call for collaborative research and development projects in the defence sector of the European Defence Fund (EDF).
The European consortium, coordinated by Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between Thales (67%) and Leonardo (33%), involves 21 partners and 18 subcontractors from 11 countries. The main project partners are: CIRA, Elettronica, TASI and Leonardo for Italy, ONERA and CEA for France, INTA for Spain and ESG and TAO for Germany.
EuroHAPS aims to develop several stratospheric demonstrators with the aim of improving intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and communication capabilities. For this reason, flight demonstrations are planned for three types of complementary stratospheric platforms:
- a small-scale StratobusTM from Thales Alenia Space, a solar-powered airship designed for long-duration missions that offers a large payload capacity.
- a hybrid high-altitude airship (HHAA – Hybrid High Altitude Airship) of CIRA, able to sustain itself not only for aerostatic buoyancy but also for the aerodynamic forces generated by its wing shape.
- an ESG and TAO Autonomous Stratospheric Balloon System (ASBaSs), consisting of three stratospheric helium balloons controllable at altitude.
These complementary platforms, with very different operating times, capacities and operating restrictions, will provide Europe with a wide range of solutions to meet a variety of different needs.
The project includes a series of demonstration tests, such as: Lidar observation to identify and classify targets at sea or on land, and for the latter, the ability to detect them in environments covered by vegetation; communications intelligence (COMINT) and electronic intelligence (ELINT) missions; an interconnected broadband communications network for air and ground operators.
EuroHAPS aims to revive the use of high-altitude platform systems for government and defence missions with the support of six Ministries of Defence (France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Hungary and the Czech Republic), the European Commission, the Regional Authority of Southern France and the Canary Islands region.
HAPS offer new opportunities to integrate land, satellite or air assets with unique capabilities tailored to operational requirements. The stratosphere is a still rather unknown domain that supports missions of very long duration – up to a year – at relatively low altitudes (about 20 km), thus offering considerable resolution for observation missions and robust link links for communication missions. The flight demonstration of HAPS platforms will allow different platforms to be verified, address the main technical risks associated with these new technologies, while refining operational requirements, ultimately enabling the development of future HAPS systems.
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