General Atomics Aeronautical Systems has completed the critical design review (CDR) of a Block 50 advanced cockpit ground control station (GCS) for U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft. Three of the new-design control stations were being tested, the company announced in June.

The Block 50 GCS will replace existing units and is one of two new ground stations General Atomics is developing; a second GCS featuring Rockwell Collins Pro Line Fusion avionics will support the UK Royal Air Force’s new MQ-9B Protector, scheduled for first delivery in 2019. The MQ-9B will be capable of automatic takeoff and landing.

A cockpit evaluation team of Air Force pilots and sensor operators designed the human-machine interface aspect of the Block 50 GCS to reduce pilot and operator workload. The National Institute for Aviation Research in Wichita, Kansas, assisted in the overall layout, General Atomics said.

At the Paris Air Show in mid-June, the company displayed a working Block 50 GCS demonstrator, featuring six 24-inch, high-definition, touchscreen displays aligned in two rows of three displays. A hands-on throttle and stick (HOTAS) grip provides flight, weapons and sensor system control. A pilot or operator can control both the flight and payload; however, a typical mission would consist of a pilot and a sensor operator using side-by-side ground stations.

The top three screens of the GCS provide the pilot with a synthetic vision view for situational awareness; the middle screen serves as a head-up display with synthetic vision, nose-camera imagery and instrument overlays.

Along the bottom row of displays, the left screen is a segmented panel with checklist, communications and avionics and sensor status segments—comparable to an engine indicating and crew alerting system (EICAS) display. The bottom center screen is a touchscreen moving-map and mission-planning display. The bottom right screen is a “growth screen” that can be customized to a user’s preference, said General Atomics project engineer Steve De La Cruz.

Existing MQ-1 Predator/MQ-9 Reaper ground stations are four-screen systems, De La Cruz said. “The legacy ground station only has the live video and a moving map, but it’s a little more painstaking [flowing in] maps and the information you want,” he explained. “The information that is available to the pilot is non-graphic-based, so there are digital readouts that are color-coded for ease of identifying values that are out of limit, but it’s all digital information. In order to understand which direction it’s going the pilot has to sit there and do the math. That system has been flying for many millions of hours and it’s been fine.”

Under its current development contract with the U.S. Air Force, General Atomics said it has built three Block 50 stations that were undergoing initial testing. Four additional stations, including mobile shelter and fixed-facility configurations, were being assembled. Next in order will be systems integration and ground-test phases, with MQ-9 flight tests scheduled to begin next year.

“Our Block 50 team is proud of the development effort that addressed more than 700 customer requirements covering all areas of GCS performance,” David Alexander, General Atomics Aircraft Systems president, stated in a press release. “The Block 50 GCS CDR marks the successful completion of requirements established by our Air Force customer.”