The latest ground control station technology for unmanned aerial systems has been fielded by Lockheed Martin for use with its Fury UAS, the company said.

The small and rugged ground control system, named xGCS, provides processing and communications support for the Fury and other company Advanced Group 3 UAS vehicles.

"The Fury UAS is an expeditionary platform with best-in-industry capabilities," said Jay McConville, director of business development for Lockheed Martin's Fury UAS. "It is an Advanced Group 3 UAS with significant increases to endurance, payload capacity, communications capability, and advanced mission management.

"Often times our warfighters are struggling with the 'tyranny of distance.' Fury gives them a toolset to tackle these challenges. For these reasons we needed a ground control hardware implementation that was rugged, light-weight, and incredibly powerful. The xGCS has met all of our requirements and expectations."

The xGCS uses commercial off-the-shelf hardware contained within a rugged framework configuration. The system is easy to upgrade and can host any standard ground control software suite. It also can simultaneously run the Sharkfin UAS mission management system and the VCS-4586 product suite, which Lockheed obtained in 2012 when it acquired Chandler/May Inc. and CDL Systems Inc.

The Fury UAS is a long-endurance, runway independent aircraft for surveillance, reconnaissance, target acquisition and special mission use. It was a product of Chandler/May.