Aussie developer to supply US Defence contractor

Australian developer Mediaware, won a contract to supply its Unmanned Aerial Vehicle video exploitation technology to General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI), a US-based manufacturer of unmanned aircraft, surveillance and radar imaging systems.

Under the terms of the contract, Mediaware will provide the digital video capture and exploitation software for the Ground Control Station (GCS) and for GA-ASI's Predator unmanned aircraft system, used by the US Defence Force, said Chris Newell, CEO of Mediaware.

Newell said the company has worked with the military and intelligence community in Australia and overseas for a couple of years.

“The first phase of the project is the development of the system, to be completed in August. It then be rolled out by GA,” he said.

Also as part of the agreement, Newell said Mediaware will help engineer, develop and integrate video and data dissemination enhancements for the GCS.

“These enhancements will provide video and metadata capture, exploitation and dissemination and align the Predator GCS system with current standards and interoperability requirements,” he said.

Mediaware will also provide the software necessary to combine Predator aircraft positional information and sensor video into a single MPEG-2 internet compliant digital video stream that can be exported real-time from the GCS.

It is anticipated that after the initial development phase, the GCS enhancements could be retrofitted to the Predator fleet, said Newell.

Mediaware has offices in Canberra and Sydney, Australia and in Washington DC. It began operations in 1998.

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