Illustration
The words we use.
Short definitions of the terms on this site.
31 of 31 terms
A
- Aerostat
- A lighter-than-air vehicle held by a tether, lifted by gas rather than engines. The platform
C
- Command and control (C2)
- The system where operators see tracks and decide what to do.
- Counter-UAS (C-UAS)
- Systems that find, track and respond to drones. Early warning
- Cueing
- Telling an operator or sensor where to look. We offer it only to authorized forces.
D
- Drop test
- Releasing a test article from altitude to see how it falls and lands. Test range
E
- Envelope
- The fabric body of an aerostat that holds the lift gas.
- EO/IR
- Day and night cameras: electro-optical and infrared.
F
- Fail-secure
- A design where a fault, such as lost power, leaves the system held, not released. Safety
G
- GNSS
- Satellite navigation, such as GPS, NavIC and Galileo. It gives position and time, and can be jammed.
- Ground clutter
- Radar returns from the ground, buildings and trees, which can hide a slow drone.
- Ground layer
- Ground sensors that cover a site when weather grounds the aerostats.
- Ground station
- The machine that launches, recovers, docks and services the aerostat.
J
- Jamming
- Deliberate interference that drowns out a signal.
L
- Lift gas
- The gas inside the envelope that lifts it, today helium.
- Line of sight
- A clear straight path between a sensor and its target.
M
- Mesh relay
- Radios that pass traffic between each other and route around a failed one. Relay
- Microgravity
- Near-weightlessness, as in free fall. Measured as leftover acceleration, not drop time.
P
- Parafoil
- A steerable parachute wing that can guide a payload to a landing point.
- Passive RF detection
- Listening for a drone's radio signals without transmitting. Signals intelligence
- Payload interface
- The standard mounting, power, data and time connection for what the aerostat carries.
R
- Radio horizon
- The farthest distance at which a radio or radar has line of sight over the curved Earth. A ceiling, not a detection range. Try it
S
- Signals intelligence (SIGINT)
- Intelligence from detecting and analysing radio emissions.
T
- Telemetry
- Data sent from a moving vehicle to the ground during a test.
- Terrain masking
- When hills, buildings or trees hide a target from a sensor.
- Tether
- The line that holds the aerostat. On long missions it can carry power up and data down.
- Tethered aerostat
- An aerostat held over one place by a tether to a ground station.
- Time difference of arrival (TDOA)
- Locating a transmitter by when its signal reaches three or more receivers.
- Track
- The position history of one object, with an identity and a confidence.
- Truth track
- An independent record of where each object really was during a test. Test range
U
- Uptime
- The share of scheduled time an aerostat is up with a working payload.
W
- Winch
- The motor-driven drum that pays out and reels in the tether.
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