Britain will introduce in its fleet of armed surveillance drones a new generation of unmanned aircraft including the new Protector aircraft.
Britain will introduce in its fleet of armed surveillance drones a new generation of unmanned aircraft. As a result, the overall number of aircrafts in the fleet will double. The new aerial vehicles will have significantly improved performance, with the ability to fly for nearly twice as long and equipped with new weaponry and advanced sensors. Protector will be able to stay airborne for more than 40 hours, significantly more than the actual 25 hours reached by the Reaper.
The RAF will likely adopt, near the end of this decade, a new General Atomics Certifiable Predator B, aka Protector, for both surveillance and air strike missions.
The UK Ministry of Defense made public details of the £415m contract signed with the Pentagon for the purchase of 20 new drones that will replace the RAF’s 10 existing MQ-9 Reapers.
“The Unmanned Air Systems Team, part of the UK Ministry of Defense (“MoD”), intends to acquire the PROTECTOR Unmanned Aerial System through a Government -Government Foreign Military Sales (FMS) Contract with the US Department of Defence (US DoD),” states the announcement published by the MoD.
The new aircraft is certified to fly in European airspace, meaning that NATO and other European organizations could use it for operations.
“The aircraft is much more capable than its predecessor. It has almost double the endurance of the Reaper, so with a fleet of 20 aircraft, this represents an almost quadrupling of the capability, vital given the MoD’s range of commitments and its requirement to respond to emerging crises,” Liz Quintana, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, said to The Telegraph.
The Protector drone was first announced by David Cameron during last year’s defense review, when the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom explained the importance of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in the fight against the Islamic State.
According to the Defense Secretary, the UK Government is also testing new high altitude surveillance drones that can stay aloft for weeks and could be used for intelligence activities.
The drones “will provide cutting edge intelligence gathering capability and help keep our country safe. They are a key part of our £178 billion equipment plan, backed by a defense budget that will increase every year from now until the end of the decade,” said a Ministry of Defense spokeswoman about the Protector drones.
The Ministry of Defense will buy at least two Zephyr 8 aircraft for £10.6m. The surveillance drones are designed to fly at 65,000ft, twice as high as an airliner, but weigh only 66lb and are covered in solar panels to maintain the device’s charge.
(Security Affairs – Protector drone, surveillance drones)
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