Mercury Computer Systems, a Massachusetts-based software and technology company, started a new venture this month, unveiling a fully integrated unmanned aircraft system (UAS). The company said the Vista-NAV SSR (Smart Surveillance & Reconnaissance) aircraft is the company’s first end-to-end product offering to be pre-integrated with an airframe architecture. The VistaNav-SSR comprises a ground station, synthetic vision system, a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), and various electronic sensor systems. “Building on the success of our VistaNav general aviation synthetic vision system, we are extending the benefits of 3D situational awareness to small unmanned aircraft systems,” said Philippe Roy, Director and General Manager of the Navigation & Simulation Systems Group at Mercury. The new system is based on the Vector-LRE airframe, a small UAV from IntelliTech Microsystems, a manufacturer of autonomous vehicle technologies. The system also includes Mercury’s ACIP technology, which, it says, allows the integration of airborne electronics and associated functions into a small, unmanned airframe. More