Defence

New technologies to be flown in Swedish non-segregated airspace in combined exercise with navigation agency

Saab Aerosystems and Sweden’s air navigation service provider are planning a joint demonstration of unmanned air vehicle operations in non-segregated airspace in 2007.

The demonstration, planning for which is at the preliminary stage, will use UAVs and manned aircraft operating as UAV surrogates to explore a variety of integration options as well as test new sense-and-avoid technologies.

Michael Franzen, programme director for UAV systems at Saab Aerosystems, says the demonstration will focus on military UAV applications, but will include at least one flight demonstration for civil law enforcement and emergency response agencies.

UAV sense-and-avoid technologies being examined include optical as well as radar-based options.

Saab is seeking involvement of a variety of international UAV manufacturers in the demonstration, but will not use Swedish army Sagem Ugglan (Sperwer) UAVs.

The demonstration will also support Saab’s ongoing modular tactical UAV development programme, intended to result in a family of common airframe and mission systems that can be readily adapted to meet specific mission needs. Franzen says initial design studies for a modular-based system are due to be completed within weeks.

Meanwhile, co-operative development options are being explored. “We are talking with several companies. We are slowly getting together with some other companies so that we can evaluate which of them benefits from the Saab competence and what we can gain from other companies,” he says.

Saab is meanwhile preparing to fly its Filur subscale unmanned combat air vehicle demonstrator within the next three months, with the aircraft now undergoing ground testing. Franzen says that Filur will not participate in the 2007 air traffic integration demonstration because it lacks the payload capacity required to carry sense-and-avoid systems.

Saab’s Sharc UCAV demonstrator system programme ended late last year after the achievement of fully autonomous take-off, landing and flight during tests at Vidsel test range in northern Sweden in August last year.