DCNS achieves automated UAV recovery at sea

摘要

DCNS has claimed a world first after recovering a Camcopter S-100 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to an underway French Navy destroyer using an automatic landing system. The milestone was achieved on 9-10 October, less than two weeks after Schiebel, the rotary-wing aircraft's Austrian manufacturer, said that it had completed flight testing from a German Navy K130 corvette. During the French trials in the Mediterranean, an S-100 alighted on the flight deck of the Georges Leygues-class destroyer Montcalm using the Systeme d'Appontage et de Decollage Automatique (SADA) landing system. The Camcopter/SADA combination was tested aboard Montcalm for three days and included a manual recovery and 40 automatic landings. SADA uses an infrared sensor to track the UAV while generating flight commands to adjust trajectory until the aircraft is correctly positioned so that its Harpoon deck-lock engages the centre of the landing grid.