Fury 1500 UAS downlinks live video over SATCOM

AME Unmanned Air Systems (AME UAS) has announced on 7 September that its Fury 1500 UAS has become the first ‘truly tactical’ UAS to downlink live video over Satellite Communications (SATCOM). According to the company, a Fury aircraft transmitted full-motion video to a ground terminal over a high bandwidth commercial SATCOM link.

The Fury 1500 UAS, developed by AME UAS, is operated and controlled by the company's UAS Mission Management software, SharkFin. The system is designed for a broad range of missions, with 190lb useful load and 1.5 KW of available power to support several payloads simultaneously while maintaining over 16hrs of endurance.

AME UAS said that bringing Beyond Line of Sight (BLOS) capability to a tactical UAV means that Fury is able to support missions at distances previously impossible using tactically deployed unmanned systems.

John Purvis, president and CEO of AME UAS, said: ‘This is an important milestone for the tactical UAS community. BLOS capability puts Fury alone in the low-altitude, long-endurance, large payload, tactical UAS market. Now with BLOS we have blurred the line between tactical and strategic unmanned ISR without the need for a fixed runway. This is a huge win for the warfighter and intelligence community. The UAS can operate from almost anywhere with a minimal forward deployed crew. We feel Fury has a critical mix of capabilities for both now and in the foreseeable future.’