England’s Taranis to be one of the largest UAVs ever

Yet another potent UAV is in the development phase, this one for the UK Ministry of Defence to be constructed by a team headed by BAE Systems, together with Rolls-Royce, Smiths Aerospace and QinetiQ, plus MoD military staff and scientists. The four year project to develop a world-class UAV (Unmanned Air Vehicle) Technology Demonstrator Programme called Taranis. Ground testing of the UKP124 million Taranis project is expected to take place in early 2009 with the first flight trials taking place in 2010. Named after the Celtic God of Thunder, Taranis will be an unmanned fast jet demonstrator the size of a Hawk trainer - making it one of the world's largest UAVs - that will be stealthy, fast and be able to test deploy a range of munitions over a number of targets and be able to defend itself against manned and other unmanned enemy aircraft.

The four-year Taranis project, part of the UK Government’s Strategic Unmanned Air Vehicle (Experimental) Programme [SUAV(E)], will result in a UAV with fully integrated autonomous systems and low observable features.

About the size of a BAE Systems Hawk, Taranis will provide the MoD with experimental evidence on the potential capabilities of this class of UAV and help to inform decisions on the future mix of manned and unmanned fast jet aircraft.

Taranis is jointly funded by the UK MoD and UK industry, and will bring together a number of technologies, capabilities and systems to produce a technology demonstrator based around a fully autonomous intelligent system.

In addition to the existing industry partners, the project will also engage a significant number of other UK suppliers who will provide the programme with supporting technology and components.

Mike Turner, Chief Executive of BAE Systems, said: “This project supports many of the key drivers outlined in the Defence Industrial Strategy – in particular the way in which we, as a nation, continue to develop a sustainable sovereign capability by supporting UK design and engineering skills. This is an important project in light of the way in which military operations are changing.”

Mark Kane, managing director of Autonomous Systems & Future Capability (Air) for BAE Systems, said: “Taranis will make use of at least 10 years of research and development into low observables, systems integration, control infrastructure and full autonomy. It follows the completion of risk reduction activities to ensure the mix of technologies, materials and systems used are robust enough for the ‘next logical step’. These risk reduction activities include the Replica* programme, jointly funded with the MoD and the MoD funded ‘Nightjar’ programme.

He added: “Taranis will build on and use the technologies and systems trialled in the previous demonstrators we have produced such as Kestrel, Corax, Raven and HERTI. It is an important part of our future.”

BAE Systems, as prime contractor will provide many elements of the Taranis technology demonstrator, including the low observability, systems integration, control infrastructure and full autonomy elements (in partnership with QinetiQ); Rolls-Royce will focus on the next generation propulsion installation for the demonstrator and Smiths Aerospace will utilise their skills in ‘vehicle systems’. The TDP Programme will also use a number of other suppliers, some of which have already been selected, including the supply of flight control computing from BAE Systems Australia, one of the few non UK developments expected in the programme and support from BAE Systems Integrated System Technologies (INSYTE) with C4ISTAR related work.

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