Success in warfare is driven by the ability to collect information about the area of operation and the enemy present in the area. For times when full-scale aerial assets are not available for a platoon-sized unit, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) capable of providing aerial reconnaissance and visual signaling is necessary. The solution proposed in response to this challenge was to create a man-packable UAV able to conduct aerial surveillance and also deploy smoke markers. This paper documents three semesters of work during which such an aircraft has been successfully designed, built and flown manually, while on a parallel track the control and guidance systems have been tested in a separate aircraft. The final step of the project will be to integrate the guidance and control systems into the aircraft and fly an autonomous simulated mission .
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