SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Swift Engineering, Inc.
1141 Via Callejon
San Clemente, CA 92673 - 6230
(949) 492-6608

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Andrew Streett
astreett@swiftengineering.com
1141-A Via Callejon
San Clemente, CA 92673 - 6230
(949) 492-6608 Extension :219

CORPORATE/BUSINESS OFFICIAL (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Phillip ` Mengden
pmengden@swiftengineering.com
1141-A Via Callejon
San Clemente, CA 92673 - 6230
(949) 492-6608 Extension :245

Estimated Technology Readiness Level (TRL) at beginning and end of contract:
Begin: 4
End: 8

Technology Available (TAV) Subtopics
Unmanned Aircraft and Sounding Rocket Technologies is a Technology Available (TAV) subtopic that includes NASA Intellectual Property (IP). Do you plan to use the NASA IP under the award?
No

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (Limit 2000 characters, approximately 200 words)
Swift proposes to design, fabricate, and fly a Swift Ultra Long Endurance (SULE) 30-day mission HALE UAS with flight tests including: 24-hrs, 48-hrs, and 7-days during the Phase 2 timeline. All operations, ground control, safety, reviews, and payload will be included in these test flights and within the proposed 2 year timeframe. Zephyr is the only platform that has achieved HALE flights for over a week (14 days), however, it is based in the UK. No US company has a HALE platform that can confidently sell to the US government/NASA with a confirmed multi-week endurance. Without investment, the US will have to rely on the European-based Airbus/Qinetiq Zephyr solution. Swift's innovation is a UAV designed for at least 30-day endurance (nothing exists like this) mission capabilities; the functionality to station-keep at altitude (50-60 knot cruise speed), the ability to take-off and get to altitude in 1-2 hours, a fully electric system, the ability to store and transport in a 40 ft shipping container, the ease of use (2-3 persons), and a cost and schedule that is aggressive but within Swift's experience and capabilities. Swift will design, fabricate and fly a UAS capable of 30-day endurance with the possibility to exponentially decrease costs and increase data provided to industries. System testing will include multiple subsystem and system on-the-ground tests and flights for 24-hrs, 48-hrs and 7-days will be completed at Yuma Proving Grounds and/or NASA Armstrong. Swift will leverage 15 years of UAV and project management experience with multiple large (50+ ft) structural builds to reduce programmatic risk and meet the aggressive milestones within 2 years.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
10 mission cases with direct support from NASA focals: (1) FluidCam mission, (2) Hurricane intensity development, (3) Cubesat testing platform, (4) Cosmic Dust Collection, (5) Profile missions from 90,000 ft to 30,000 ft, (6) Chemical/Air sensing, (7) Lightning Package, (8) Cloud thermal data collection, (9) Volcano plume monitoring, (10) Urban/city diurnal thermal data.

In addition other NASA Earth Science missions that would benefit from this technology are: Oceanographic Research, Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) Surveillance, Tornado Monitoring, Cloud and Aerosol Measurements, Stratospheric Ozone Chemistry, Tropospheric Pollution/Air Quality, Water Vapor Measurements, O2 and CO2 Flux Measurements, Vegetation Composition, Aerosol and Precipitation Distribution, Glacier and Ice Sheet Dynamics, Antarctic Exploration Surveyor, Imaging Spectroscopy, Topographic LIDAR Mapping, Magnetic Fields Measurement, Surface Deformation Interferometry. There are so many NASA missions, that this is a small indication of the NASA market.

Space Act Agreement - NASA JPL/NASA Ames/Swift Engineering Inc:
A Space Act Agreement (SAA) has been started by Lance Christensen (NASA JPL) during Phase 1 due to the support of a platform like this (30-day UAV) that would benefit air quality sensing in the stratosphere. Swift Engineering expects that Phase II will utilize this SAA to define a mission use case for future NASA work.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
Emergency Response: Events such as active volcano plume assessment, forest fire damage assessment, forest fire communications, pirate/coastal patrol, emergency on-demand communications, disaster assessment, and search and rescue. This technology can outpace satellites because it can be launched in a matter of hours to stare and manage large disaster/emergency response areas.

Conservation, Agriculture, and Marine Applications: wildlife census and animal tracking, land resource management, crop disease tracking, mapping, agriculture yield maximization, and invasive plant assessment. Currently right now the US is spending time creating marine protected areas (MPAs). There are currently no cost-effective technologies that can monitor them. Agricultural fields need almost 4-in resolution on the ground and current public data (LandSat) can't provide that resolution. This technology can easily outpace satellite NRE company costs.

Border Patrol: It takes $12,255/hr to operate drones on the border. This technology is targeting $1000/hr cost; an order of magnitude decrease for border patrol.

High Resolution Imagery: Google recently (2014) acquired Skybox for $500M to launch $10M satellites using $50M-$90M rockets to get near real-time HD imagery of the earth; similar results for orders for magnitude less cost.

Swift has discussed with 2 Tier 1 ($5B+) aerospace companies and 1 commercial ($10B+ revenues) company. Swift has also received interest from the DOE, DHS, and NAVY.