PRODUCT TRANSITION
Black River Systems excels at transitioning advanced engineering Research and Development (R&D) into rapid prototypes for early deployment, assessment, and support.
PROCESS
PRODUCTION
Black River has an in-house development lab, assembly workstations and electronic test equipment for prototyping and Limited Rate Initial Production (LRIP) for both hardware and software. Initial test articles are assembled in-house while full-scale production is often outsourced to build-to-print partners. Black River often maintains multiple production lines to foster competition and ensure that our products are assembled on-time and maintain the highest quality.
DEPLOYMENT
The Black River team is often faced with challenging integration and operations deadlines for government deployments and evaluations. For example, our Ninja team has supported urgent operational requirements for military services in the past where we have deployed over 500 worldwide Ninja units for C-UAS operations. For software, the company adheres to agile software development practices, ensuring that our capabilities evolve from operator feedback at a rapid pace. We apply Continuous Integration (CI) processes that provide the backbone for rapid release development and deployment. The Ninja team manages all CUAS system orders, logistics, delivery, installation, quality assurance, and adaptive maintenance to ensure a 96% operational availability.
OPERATIONAL ASSESSMENTS
Black River routinely conducts operational assessments on new products to ensure they are meeting the operators needs for both effectiveness and suitability. We place our prototypes into the operator community early to analyze and evaluate the product performance and get direct feedback from the users. These operational assessments allow the team to observe an operator’s current processes and assess the performance of our systems in meeting the requirements. These efforts also identify opportunities for early product improvement and result in recommendations for any process improvements as well.
TRAINING
To support the training and certification of Ninja operators, Black River has created a comprehensive training program and established a C-UAS training capability at the Duette Training and Testing Center (DTTC) in Florida. The facility has an approved FAA Certificate of Authorization to permit UAS flight operations within the Class G airspace ensuring a realistic training experience for operator personnel. The range offers over 200 acres of secure training space with a secure building for a variety of operations and complete access to an additional 21,000 acres of adjoining property. Standard and tailored training classes are available that include system setup/teardown, Command and Control (C2) Operations, basic troubleshooting, installation of software upgrades, system log collection, and scenario-based training with base-specific Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs). Mobile training teams are also utilized to bring training directly to customer locations.
MAINTENANCE
With 190 Installations in 22 countries, Black River has created a solid maintenance plan that ensures the Operational Availability of Ninja C-UAS systems. The Ninja Team employs Global Field Service Representatives (FSRs) at both CONUS and OCONUS locations who continuously uphold maintenance procedures to alleviate system down-time. The use of site surveys, system tests, operational performance assessments and data analysis creates a continuous improvement process focused on uptime with simple field maintenance without the need for expensive equipment or specialized skills.
