The Royal Navy’s first spy drones are to take off following a 46,350,000 US Dollar or £30m deal for the Boeing Scan Eagle popular with the US military since 2005.
The 22kg unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) will enable UK warships to scout beyond the horizon and gather evidence on illegal activities such as piracy and drug smuggling or establish the nature or ownership of a detected ship.
The ScanEagle is built by Boeing subsidiary Insitu and is already used by a number of other armed forces including those of the US, Canada, Japan, Australia and the Netherlands. It is has been a popular choice for forces in Afghanistan and was the model of drone captured by Iranian forces last year.
‘ScanEagle represents an important addition to the Royal Navy’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability,’ said Royal Navy captain Ian Annett, in a statement from the Ministry of Defence.
‘Its ability to deploy during the day and night coupled with the technology it uses, will give commanders a clearer picture of the operational situation whenever it’s required.’
The unarmed aircraft has a wingspan of just over three meters and is launched from ships by a pneumatic wedge catapult. It then flies at around 60 knots at altitudes of up to around 5km, controlled by a specialist team on board the ship that can remotely pilot the vehicle or send it on preprogrammed missions.
It can stay in the air for 24 hours and, once its mission is completed, the ScanEagle is recovered using a cable suspended from roughly 15 meters that is caught by a hook on the aircraft’s wing.
Defence minister Philip Dunne said: ‘ScanEagle provides the Royal Navy with proven surveillance capability that has already been used on operations by other nations, so we know we are getting top quality equipment. The technology is off-the-shelf and will be available to the Royal Navy as soon as possible.
‘Our continued investment in Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance systems is essential to keeping our Armed Forces up to date with the latest capabilities and this will be a central part of the MoD’s investment in new equipment over the next 10 years.
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