By Troy Turner
HUNTSVILLE – Hellhound, the word, refers to a ferocious animal that aggressively seeks its prey, and that is the strategy Cummings Aerospace and the U.S. Army is thinking with the new Hellhound unmanned aerial vehicle developed by Cummings.
The war between Ukraine and Russia has opened a mad rush of militaries around the globe working to change the scope of their military planning to include UAVs. Drone warfare has escalated into primary tactics in all types of combat scenarios, including in the air, sea and soon in space.
“One thing we’ve learned from Ukraine is, they’re much more effective than we ever dreamed,” Rep. Mike Rogers, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said of UAVs in an earlier interview with AlaDefense.com.
Impressive attributes
Cummings Aerospace, based in Huntsville, Alabama, has successfully tested Hellhound over at least two proving grounds, one in Oregon and another at Fort Benning, Georgia. It hopes to land an agreement with the Army any day now, with upcoming demonstrations leading to possibilities for solid contracts with the Army and possibly the Navy, Special Operations Forces and international customers.
Several characteristics make the Hellhound appealing and separates it from the wide array of competitors trying to capture the attention of the Department of Defense.
Among them, according to company specifications:
–The Hellhound is lightweight, under 25 pounds in complete configuration including its launch canister and control unit. This makes it ideal for ground troops such as the Army’s infantry combat teams, Marines, and potentially for special forces such as the Navy SEALs, Army Rangers and other units on special missions.
–It is simple to use, so along with its lightweight design, the Hellhound makes for easy transport and rapid deployment by a single operator, enhancing its versatility on the battlefield.
–It is accurate, capable of making precision strikes over long distances.
–It is fast, using turbojet propulsion and traveling up to 384 mph in its current design, but with future variants being developed to make it hypersonic and able to reach Mach 5.
–It has a diverse payload capability, ranging from carrying explosive warheads and conducting kamikaze-style attacks, to launching intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) modules.
–If a battlefield commander or operator wants to change the mission, the Hellhound’s reconfiguration process with its modular design can take place in less than five minutes and without the need for specialized tools.
–It can be relatively cheap and easy to produce using 3D printing techniques and off-the-shelf components approved by the DOD.
–Another use can include it carrying electronic warfare equipment.
Made in Huntsville, Alabama
Cummings Aerospace is a vibrant company on the booming, high-tech Huntsville space and missile defense landscape with deep roots in the community and plans to keep it that way, says its president and CEO, Shiela Cummings, who founded the company in 2009.
System design and analysis, modeling and simulation, software development, manufacturing, systems integration and testing are among the other services the company already provides, but it is the Hellhound capturing the most headlines of late.
Cummings sat for an interview with AlaDefense.com last week to share the latest insight and some of the details behind the Hellhound program, such as, where will it be produced?
“We’re headquartered here in Huntsville, so of course our main manufacturing capability is here in Huntsville, and the idea is we make it here,” she said. “But we also have trusted suppliers around the country, and actually internationally. We envision we could have agreements to produce the vehicle at other locations to meet some of the production demands that we’re seeing with our customers.
“So, we’re using more of a distributed manufacturing model,” Cummings said. “We have lined up the relationships and we have discussed the business mechanisms to make that happen. We have not finalized any agreements with any supplier partners because we are waiting for final acquisitions to tell us what quantity. So, depending on that quantity, we would pull the trigger on any one of those supplier agreements.”
Sheila Cummings
She expects some type of Army indication of what it wants “any day now,” but adds, “We’re also submitting a number of white papers in response to the different topics that are available right now. So, it could be as early as September or October when we get our first contract.”
Turbojet propulsion means…speed
Among the top-selling points that make the Hellhound different from competing models is its speed and its diversity offerings for payloads with its modular design, Cummings said.
“A lot of our competitors are quad-copter based. There is a smaller number of us that are leveraging the turbojet propulsion solution set that gives you a more flexible mission capability, because with the turbojet propulsion you have higher speeds, more rapid time to the target, and you can allow the operator to have more decision time, because you can get to the target more quickly,” she said. “We feel like our design has some superior benefits over quadcopter-type solutions.”
Regarding its payload, “with it being a loitering munition, it obviously can carry a warhead. But it also is a platform where you could carry ISR… And then you could also carry an EW (electronic warfare) payload,” she said. “We’ve designed the payload section to be very modular to accommodate multiple payloads.”
Although already having impressed the Army, Cummings Aerospace is working to continue impressing military and defense officials of the Hellhound’s battlefield value.
“We’ve got a lot of people who said it’s very interesting and have invited us to participate in multiple demonstrations, technology demos and exercises,” she said. “And so we have, I’d say, seven or eight of those that we’re participating in this year where we’re showing the Hellhound capability.
“From there, as they see the technology we demonstrate, it’s about aligning with acquisitions that are contract vehicles to support future purchases.”
Early goals for production include making 1,500 units per year, delivered in different phases. “For quantities above that, we would look to activate that distributed production base to meet that demand.”
“There are a number of sources that we’re leveraging to anticipate what that total production quantity would be,” Cummings said. “We have some demos with the Navy that we’re conducting this summer that will be very telling in terms of ultimately the real opportunity to deal with the Navy.”
Supply chain management is a factor for any defense contractor these days, but Cummings Aerospace feels it is ahead of the game on meeting its needs.
“We have spent a lot of time making sure we have a very robust supply chain for Hellhound components and systems, making sure we’ve got dual suppliers and as many subsystems and components as we can. Dual sources, in some cases three sources, just to ensure robustness,” she said.
“One of the reasons why we’re trying to leverage commercial, off-the-shelf components as extensively as we are is to make sure we mitigate the lead time with hardware and custom-designed components,” she said. “You minimize that, then you minimize the long-term challenges you have with the supply chain.”
Golden Dome, cyber and more
Cummings Aerospace isn’t just positioning its Hellhound UAV for today’s mission needs, as it already is being developed with several future variants in mind.
Air Force Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, commander of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, spoke recently at a House Armed Services Committee hearing about defense of the U.S. homeland. (DOD photo)
“As we look at Golden Dome, we’re looking at concepts where we scale Hellhound to more of a true missile system,” Cummings said regarding the much-publicized consideration of creating a “Golden Dome” missile defense system to protect the U.S. mainland.
“Also, as we have developed it, we’re looking at some of the major subsystems and how we can branch into technologies with respect to communication systems or some of the algorithms that are needed to implement the solutions,” she said of its developing technology. “Cyber is obviously another area, and electronic warfare. Those are natural capability enhancements and evolutions as we have developed Hellhound.”
And then, there is the likely future of producing a hypersonic model of Hellhound.
Cummings Aerospace recently partnered with ATRX, another Huntsville-based company, to develop a hypersonic variant capable of reaching Mach 5 speeds ideal for long-range strikes against high-priority targets such as missile launchers and air defense systems.
Such a hypersonic ability would allow the Hellhound to outmaneuver traditional air defense systems and allow its operators more options for faster response. If accomplished, the Hellhound could become the first hypersonic UAV.
The future of space planes
ATRX, meanwhile, is looking at its partnership with Cummings Aerospace to also advance its work toward producing space planes as a new platform for launching satellites and other spacecraft, using high-speed air turbo rockets, or ATRs.
L-R: ATRX President John Bergmans, Cummings Aerospace CEO Sheila Cummings, ATRX CEO Felix Bustos III and ATRX CTO John Bossard. (Photo via ATRX media.)
“Cummings Aerospace is the perfect partner, considering the impressive work they’ve already done for the U.S. Department of Defense,” said ATRX CEO Felix Bustos III. “Being able to validate the performance of our ATRs using a bespoke UAS, based on a flight-proven airframe, will de-risk and accelerate our space plane development efforts.
“Space planes are very much needed with more than 50,000, mostly commercial, satellites that need to be launched into orbit in the next few years,” he said, adding that ATRX, like Cummings, also plans to keep much of its work locally based.
“Huntsville has a talented and capable space-focused workforce,” Bustos said, “and we plan to draw on their abilities to help this city become the hypersonic and space plane manufacturing capital of the world.”
To learn more about Cummings Aerospace, classified by the DOD as a Native American Woman-Owned Small Business, click here.
Troy Turner is the editor and senior consultant for AlaDefense.com. He can be reached at [email protected]. His bio can be found here.
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