Taranis
A prototype of England’s Taranis Unmanned Combat Aircraft System (UCAS) that we first covered back in 2006 has been unveiled for the first time by the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD). Three and a half years in the making and the product of more than a million man-hours the concept demonstrator is designed to test the possibility of developing the first ever autonomous stealthy UCAV that would ultimately be capable of precisely striking targets at long range, even on another continent. Read More
June 20, 2007 The design of autonomous systems for one of the largest Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) ever conceived, the Taranis, has been finalized ahead of schedule. The size of a Hawk trainer, the Taranis unmanned fast jet demonstrator will be focused on targeting and attack capabilities rather than the surveillance and reconnaissance roles predominately given to previous UAV programmes. While still built for stealth and speed, the aircraft will be able to test deploy a range of munitions over a number of targets and will be capable of high-level decision making to defend itself against manned and other unmanned enemy aircraft in “deep” operations. Read More
January 6, 2007 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. Read More
