U.K., France, and Germany Continue Development Production Patria Mini UAV And Sperwer-B UAV

Patria Mini UAV And Sperwer-B UAV

The U.K., France, and Germany continue to lead Europe in the development and produc tion of UAVs, with over 90 different aircraft or variants, from some 30 manufacturers. Those platforms run the gamut from MAVs to multiton behemoths. The European Union’s basic UAV thrust has been to develop dual-use systems for military and civilian applications, thus broadening market demand both within the EU and worldwide. Numerous meetings during the past year have looked at ways to further cooperative development efforts among EU member states and companies. That includes synchronizing military research funded by the European Defense Agency with civil security and other commercial applications supported by the European Commission.
  
Patria Mini UAV And Sperwer-B UAV
At the same time, efforts are under way to implement regulations for UAVs to operate in the continent’s crowded, multinational airspace regulations that could benefit EU industry by limiting the degree to which U.S.- built UAVs meet the new standards. This is especially important to both EU and U.S. developers
of large platforms such as nEUROn and Global Hawk, as well as UCAVs, which are seen as a less expensive route than new manned fighters to enlarging air attack and air superiority capabilities. But adequate training
ranges within Europe are severely limited under current flight restrictions.

In January 2008, EDA awarded a €0.5- million contract to the Air4 All consortium comprising more than a dozen of Europe’s largest aerospace and defense contractors to develop a detailed road map for the integration of UAVs into European airspace by the end of 2015 at the latest. The project involves not just industry but also government air traffic and airworthiness agencies, as well as academic and private research groups, in an effort to address safety issues for both military and commercial UAV operations across the continent.

Meanwhile, as with U.S. programs, Europe’s militaries are finding new uses for the technologies they are receiving and are making ever greater demands on the R&D community to expand those applications.
One such development, from Germany’s EMT Penzberg, is the VOLANS covert optical airborne reconnaissance naval adapted system, which enables a modified mulversion of EMT’s Aladin hand-launched MAV to be catapulted from a submerged submarine.

Three MAVs can be packaged into a pressure-tight tank along with a folding catapult launcher and mounted to a telescoping multipurpose mast. The submarine need only rise to periscope depth to lift the launcher
above the surface and get the MAVs airborne. Signals from the MAVs can be retrieved through an antenna, allowing the submarine to extend its sensor range on the surface and in the air above it while remaining submerged.

The MAV could either transmit real-time data from within a 30-km range, if the submarine keeps its communications mast extended, or widen its patrol and rendezvous with the boat at a preselected time and location to download stored data, including video. Because the submarine would have to surface to recover the drones, they probably would be deployed on one-way missions. And any decision to launch the MAVs and risk having a well-equipped enemy track its broadcast signal to pinpoint the submarine’s location would make VOLANS a special-use-only system, such as providing a submarine-based special operations team with a current view of a target.