Royal Navy uncrewed aircraft trial marks European first
UK flight test sees largest unmanned aircraft take off from a Royal Navy aircraft carrier.
Lockheed Martin has completed a beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS) pipeline and well asset inspection using the Indago 2 UAS, the company announced on 31 May.
The BVLOS inspection was carried out at the Foremost Testing Range in Canada, in collaboration with Canadian UAVs. Indago is Transport Canada compliant, which means Indago operators are approved for routine access to Canadian airspace.
At the testing facility, Canadian UAVs inspected pipelines and wellheads using Indago, outfitted with its 30x payload. The quadrotor’s camera captured high resolution inspection images and video with 30x optical zoom and enhanced digital zoom.
The Indago quadrotor UAS weighs 5lbs and has an endurance of around 45 minutes at a range up to five kilometres when using its handheld controller. The range can be an extended beyond ten kilometres with directional communications devices.
Indago 2 includes Lockheed Martin’s Hydra Fusion Tools that provide situational awareness during operations and real-time three-dimensional reconstruction during flight.
UK flight test sees largest unmanned aircraft take off from a Royal Navy aircraft carrier.
CATIC have displayed its new AR-2000 drone at Dubai Airshow 2023, emphasising ship-based capabilities with PLA already purchasing.
Australia has ordered four Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton UAS which can operate as an uncrewed maritime patrol aircraft (MPA) alongside the country’s in-service Boeing P-8A MPA fleet.
The Khronos tethered UAS has been designed to be simple to use and has drawn on Elistair’s experience with hundreds of existing customers.
The use of long-duration Uncrewed Surface Vehicles for maritime surveillance and monitoring has become part of the fleet inventory as navies try to reduce the level of effort required to gather intelligence on areas of interest.
A growing number of uncrewed systems have been on show at Sydney's Indo-Pacific Maritime exhibition with a select few currently being trialled to see if they can enhance the Royal Australian Navy's surveillance levels.