According to a PR published by Thales on February 10, 2023, Thales and Schiebel are pleased to announce they have been awarded a contract by the UK Ministry of Defence to deliver a game-changing rotary wing Uncrewed Air System (UAS) to provide a protective ‘eye in the sky’ capability for Royal Navy warships.
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Camcopter S-100 UAS. (Picture source: Thales)
International navies now find themselves increasingly threatened by a range of hostile platforms, often in congested maritime environments. The ability for an uncrewed rotary aircraft that can launch quickly and then provide long-range mission endurance and the ability to find, fix, track, and identify targets will bring additional protection for the ship and its crew, gaining them invaluable time to prepare and respond.
Thales will act as the lead systems integrator for the program that brings together an unrivalled combination of proven UAS capability from Schiebel and a range high precision intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance sensors and systems from Thales.
Schiebel will provide its operationally proven CAMCOPTER® S-100, a highly-effective uncrewed air system that already has more than 100,000 operating hours, including demanding deck-launched operations in challenging winds and sea states.
The S-100's sensors, supported by an Automatic Identification System and fused together with the CarteNav AIMS Mission System provides the operator the ability to detect and identify unknown targets quickly.
The Thales I-Master radar can be operated in both Synthetic Aperture Radar and Maritime Moving Target Indication modes and once it detects and finds a contact, the onboard electro-optical/infra-red sensor is cross-cued to perform the identification.
High-definition imagery and radar data is downloaded to the human operator and disseminated in real-time through the host ship’s Combat Management System and made available to multiple users.
About the Camcopter S-100
This UAV was designed between 2003 and 2005, and it has a maximum take-off weight of 200 kilograms (440 pounds). With a flight endurance of 6 hours, it can be extended to over 10 hours by adding external AVGAS fuel tanks. It has a maximum speed of 140 mph (220 km/h) and a maximum operational altitude of 18,000 feet (5,500 meters).
