Sensors - Wescam

sors, laser designation and communication
relay facilities. Later it will carry sigint
equipment and deliver lightweight
precision munitions. Some 56 systems are
planned, each with three air vehicles.
Service entry is due in late FY12.
The principal options are the 85-kg
UAS Dynamics Storm (Hermes 90), the
77-kg Raytheon/Swift Engineering Killer
Bee 4, the 59-kg Boeing/Insitu Integrator
and the much lighter 24.9-kg AAI
Aerosonde Mk4.7.
T-20: The latest entry from Arcturus, the T-
20, tested in 2009 is now in production and
being flight tested by the US Marine
Corps and the US Navy, since it has the
ability to drop payloads from its underwing
pylons (dropping tests of Snowflake
autonomously guided parafoils developed
by the Naval Postgraduate School have
also been carried out). At time of writing,
the two aforementioned services had
taken delivery of five units. The T-20 can
carry a pair of 81-mm munitions, which
effectively qualifies it as a combat drone.
(See video: www.armada.ch/T-20.)
Launched from a portable pneumatic
catapult, the aircraft is designed to belly
land. This means that the electro-optical
sensor, typically a Cloud Cap T-2, is
retractable. Built with composite materials,
the 75-kilo take-off weight T-20 typically
has an endurance of 16 hours with a
16-kilo payload. For more technical
details, please refer to our centre foldout
table.
Hand-launched
Hand-launched drones are illustrated by
Aerovironment’s 6.35-kg Puma AE (All
Small synthetic aperture radars, like
this Selex Galileo Picosar in the nose
of the Falco, are opening up an
entirely new boulevard of applications
to smaller drones. (Selex Galileo)
Controp has recently
tested its Stamp turret
installed onboard a
six-kilo Innocon Micro
Falcon drone. The
stabilised turret
weighs less than one
kilo. (Innocon)
Environment) and 1.9-kg RQ-11B
Raven-B.
Raven: Over 900 Ravens are currently
being operated in Iraq and Afghanistan. It
is used by the armed forces of Australia,
the Czech Republic, Denmark, Italy,
Lebanon, Netherlands, Spain, the UK and
US. The US Air Force has purchased 108
Ravens to replace the Desert Hawk. The
Pentagon’s FY11 budget request is for
312 Ravens for the US Army and 16 for
the US Marine Corps.
Puma: The Fuel Cell Puma (now under
development), using a Protonex Technology
fuel cell and a lithium-ion battery, has
istry’s many years of neglect. In 2005
the Vega group, including Kulon in
Moscow and Luch in Rybinsk, was given
the lead in drone developments. Luch is
developing the 60-kg BLA-05 Tipchak or
9M62 to support rocket artillery. The
Defence Ministry is also funding the 500-
kg Kulon BLA-06 Aist and the 35-kg
Luch BLA-07.
The St Petersburg-based Transas has
flown several drones, notably the 95-kg
Dozor-4 (or Dozor-100) and the 640-kg
Dozor-3 (or -600). Irkut is developing a
range of designs, from the lightweight
three-kg Irkut-2M and the 8.5-kg Irkut-
10 to the 200-kg Irkut-200. The optionally
piloted 850-kg Irkut 800 is based on the
Stemme S-10VT motor glider (as is
France’s 1050-kg Sagem Patroller).
In the hand-launched category,
A-Level Aerosystems has private-ventured
the 2.1-kg flying-wing Zala 421-08.
This is used by the Russian Ministry of
Interior Affairs, and is the first Russian
drone to be produced in substantial numbers
in the last 20 years. A-Level also
makes the 4.2-kg Zala 421-04M and the
18-kg Zala 421-16. Its helicopter range
includes the 12.4-kg Zala 421-06 and
Unfortunately, the necessary print screening process does not do those pictures justice.
Nevertheless, the high-definition view taken by a Star Safire HD of the same area
(right) still reveals details like lamp posts (arrows) that are lost on the standardresolution
picture at left. (Flir Systems)
already achieved an endurance of over
nine hours. It may be noted that the US
Naval Research Laboratory’s 17-kg fuel
cell-powered Ion Tiger made a flight of 23
hr 17 min in October 2009.
Wasp: Micro air vehicles (Mavs) are now
available, thanks to lighter batteries and
sensors. The principal example is the 340-
gram Aerovironment Wasp III, which has
been adopted by both the US Air Force
and the US Army, the latter having a
requirement for 22,000 Wasp systems.
The US Air Force has so far purchased
442 Wasps. The Israeli alternative is the
450-gram IAI Mosquito.
Nano air vehicles (Nav) exploit Mem
(micro-electronic machine) technology to
achieve weights of ten grams or less, and
wingspans below 7.5 cm. In this category
Darpa is funding development of the flapping-wing
Aerovironment Mercury.
Russia
Special mention of Russian drone developments
is arguably justified, following
the hiatus created by the Defence Minthe
95-kg Zala 421-02, Russia’s heaviest
vtol drone.
Extreme Endurance
The mention of tethered aerostats may
be questionable in a survey dedicated to
mobile systems, but they actually fill a
role in long-term local-area surveillance
that cannot be achieved by systems that
regularly need to land. Low-cost and
offering extreme endurance, tethered
lighter-than-air helium-filled aerostats
can currently stay aloft for up to a month.
However, they are clearly limited in operating
location and altitude and thus in
sensor range.
Reap: One example is the Reap (Rapidly
Elevated Aerostat Platform), a joint
US Army/Navy development using a
Bosch Aerospace 9.5M aerostat flown at
300 ft. The Raytheon/Tcom Raid (Rapid
Aerostat Initial Deployment) is used by
the US Army in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Raid is based on the Tcom 17M aerostat,
flown at 1000 ft. The US Army also
employs the Lockheed Martin PTDS
32 armada Compendium Drones 2010