Physically, the most notable change to Teledyne Flir Defense’s new Black Hornet 4 nano-UAS has been in the weight which has more than doubled from 32g to 70g. The forward fuselage has remained largely the same size but one company official described the capability change as ‘Black Hornet 3 on steroids’.
Sensor and processing capability were where the biggest changes have occurred, according to Nils-Andreas Haagenrud, senior director of UAS programmes (US) at Flir Defense, which has been driven by customers in 44 countries already using 20,000 Black Hornet systems.
The previous version has a thermal sensor and an EO camera