BAE’s Mantis drone has returned to the UK following a series of tests at an Australian military test range according to a report in Flight International. “BAE says a production version of Mantis would be able to fly at altitudes up to 50,000ft and deliver an endurance of over 36h. The design is a potential candidate for the UK Ministry of Defence’s Scavenger requirement, which seeks a persistent intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance capability to enter use from around 2015 to 2018.
The Flight article also reveals that BAE’s “combat drone” in development, Taranis, is to be unveiled at a special ceremony at BAE’s Warton factory on Monday July 12th. The seems likely to co-incide with a military industry conference on ‘weaponised’ unmanned drones due to take place in London on 13/14th July.
Finally got a chance to check out the drones blog. Looks fantastic!!
Hope you get a chance to to include articles on Watchkeeper, Britain’s biggest drone project, using technology purchased from Israel’s military industrial complex, and tested over occupied Palestine.
With the Defence Minister claiming that the UK will agressively seek arms exports, Watchkeeper will be one of Britain’s arms exports, in conjunction with their Israeli partners.
With drone technology tried and tested over the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli technology is at the leading edge, and Israel is a major exporter of these death machines to a range of countries including much of NATO.
Many Israeli drones are initially tested at airports in the Golan Heights, on land taken from Syria in 1968 and illegally occupied since then. The UK government recently demanded that Watchkeeper drones destined for the UK NOT be tested in the Golan Heights, no doubt due to the potential embarrassment of UK drones being tested from an airport build on illegally occupied land.