UAS

Defense company Kratos has announced that it will show two low-cost combat drones at the Paris Air Show next week, offering an insight as to what military conflicts might look like in the foreseeable future – a manned combat jet leading dozens of 1,000 km/h lethally-armed unmanned companions.

DARPA’s unmanned aerial systems (UAS) can be fitted for a wide range of missions, but compact UAS can usually only carry one such instrument at a time, and need to land fr a swap over. Now, DARPA and BAE Systems are collaborating on a program to enable smaller UAS to multitask.

Wirth Research has unveiled the design of its tilt-rotor, vertical take off and landing (VTOL) drone. The company claims its UAS will be the first in the world to use lightweight hydrogen fuel cells as its primary energy source, for a combination of long range and zero local emissions.

Built for electronic surveillance, recon, intelligence and communication link missions, flight tests of Lockheed Martin's Fury drone have recently been ramped up ahead of low-rate production.

A new type of delivery drone will go the extra mile – or extra few meters, at least – to get deliveries to your door. The Panther sUAS Air/Ground Robot​ from Advanced Tactics (AT) can land in the yard or street and then drive to your doorstep for true door-to-door deliveries.

As part of DARPA's SideArm research project, Aurora Flight Sciences has successfully tested a demonstration system that scales down an aircraft carrier's launch and capture technology and turns it on its head to horizontally launch unmanned aerial systems and pluck them from the air.

A representative from the National Aeronautic Association has certified a non-stop, unrefueled 56-hour flight by Vanilla Aircraft's VA001 as the world's longest duration flight for a combustion-powered UAV weighing between 50 to 500 kg (110 to 1,102 lb).

BAE Systems has refitted a Jetstream 31 test aircraft previously used in autonomous flight research as a testbed for a series of trials aimed at proving the safety and reliability of satellite-communications based autonomous aircraft technologies.

In what Lockheed Martin claims is a first, pilot-optional helicopters and Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) have worked as a team to successfully carry out firefighting operations and a search and rescue mission.

Lately we are seeing some interesting ideas around how drones can be put to work at sea, and Elbit Systems wants to be part of this conversation. Today it announced a waterproof drone based on a packable, land-based predecessor that that can be recovered and launched again within 15 minutes.​​

​​Elbit Systems has welcomed a new addition to its lineup of small unmanned aircraft, taking the wraps off a lightweight, fixed-wing drone called the Skylark 3 that boasts a 100 km range and six-hour flight time.

A world where unmanned aircraft soar alongside their manned counterparts mightn't be all that far away, with UK defence firm Thales recently flying its Watchkeeper drone in civil airspace for the first time.