Capabilities

Airborne Systems has extensive experience and expertise in a variety of applications related to aircraft safety and effectiveness, weapons delivery, and delivery of personnel and cargo to the war-fighter.

Aircraft applications include spin and stall recovery systems for flight test, aircraft escape systems – ejection seat and walk around, and aircraft landing brakes.

Weapons systems include decelerators for both conventional, sub-munitions, and special weapons.

Military Systems include gliding and non-gliding personnel parachutes for all classes of air drop, as well as conventional and precision cargo delivery systems. Airborne Systems also supports the U.S. Missile Defense Agency by providing a number of air launch systems to deliver targets for use in the testing of missile defense systems.

Since the early days of the U.S. space program and the development of the recovery system for the Discoverer XIII reentry capsule (the first man made item ever recovered from orbit), Airborne Systems has been at the forefront of Entry, Descent & Landing Systems (EDL) development for space and high altitude applications. Since the 1960’s, Airborne Systems has designed and developed EDL systems for a multitude of crewed and uncrewed space applications. Today, Airborne Systems is leading the way with the design and development of the EDL systems needed for America’s new fleet of human-rated spacecraft being developed to replace the Space Shuttle (Orion, CST-100, Dragon, New Shepard)

The Airborne Systems Space Systems business unit is dedicated to supporting the emerging commercial space industry and is the world leader in the development of EDL systems for high altitude and space flight applications; both crewed and uncrewed, terrestrial and interplanetary.

We have developed a wide range of inflatable products starting with production of hundreds of thousands of BSU-85 Air Inflatable Retarders in the 1960’s to the recent development of large scale Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerators (IADs) for NASA.

This experience provides a significant capability to design, analyze, develop, and fabricate inflatable and fabric structures, including inflatable decelerators for supersonic and hypersonic application, impact attenuation airbags for space and aircraft application, flotation and recovery devices for naval application, inflatable deployable wings for light aircraft, pneumatic muscle actuators, and deployable/transportable structures for various applications.

We believe that successful products are born from a deep understanding of the needs and aspirations of our customers. Out approach combines rigorous research, collaborative brainstorming, and iterative prototyping, ensuring that every design decision is informed by real-world insights.

Airborne Systems follows fielded products to ensure they provide maximum capability to the user. This is done throughout continuous education, training, and support in the field.

Systems engineering tools including integrated master schedule/integrated master plan, specification compliance, validation tracking, and risk assessment are utilized to ensure project success.

In addition to the development of internal specifications for fabric, parts and equipment, Airborne Systems engineering process also includes programmatic test plans, test reports, final verification matrices and reports.

Airborne Systems’ test capabilities are unmatched in the industry. Our engineers are well-versed in all aspects of product testing, from seam and joint element testing to highly complex supersonic wind tunnel testing. Airborne Systems’ extensive experience and knowledge base ensure that tests are conducted with the precision required to validate product performance to meet federal standards.

Airborne Systems maintains dedicated test and drop facilities in several locations, enabling us to accommodate and respond to various customer requirements.

With a test history spanning decades, Airborne Systems is uniquely positioned to apply lessons learned to every system we design and test.