UAVs

The US Army battle laboratory is to buy several prototypes of the Miraterre Flight Systems Dragon Slayer hand-launched micro unmanned air vehicle (UAV) to develop it into a low-cost, expendable surveillance tool for soldiers.

Miraterre Flight Systems is a Tuscon, Arizona-based company that was formed a year ago and Dragon Slayer is its first product.
The Dragon Slayer micro UAV has a 33cm (13in) wingspan, a mass of 0.3kg (10.6oz), a top speed of 150 km/h (93mph), and an endurance of 35min. For the US Army the payload is likely to be a video camera. For flight control software the Dragon Slayer uses the open source Papparazi program.

“With Papparazi, any upgrades, as they are created by the community that originally developed the software, will be freely available to Dragon Slayer users,” says Miraterre Flight Systems' founder and chief executive Jeremy Tyler.

He added that the company had also had interest in Dragon Slayer from police forces, border security and companies that want oil pipeline condition surveillance and power line and forest monitoring. Tyler hopes the US Army will want to buy thousands of Dragon Slayers if it is approved for battlefield use.

For the US army the Dragon Slayer is expected to operate with larger unmanned air vehicles, such as the Advanced Ceramics Research Manta. From high altitude a Manta would provide video of an area that would be linked to a pre-generated map to identify the location of objects or persons of interest. Dragon Slayer would then be sent in closer to provide detailed imagery to enable a troop commander to make a tactical decision.

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