A fast progress is made in the evolution of weapons and military defense systems; whereby when it comes to train pilots in air-to-air combat scenarios or calibrate, test and evaluate defense systems against threats, emerges the need to have affordable and cost effective systems such as target drones in which the destruction of the target by direct impact is acceptable due to their low cost.
The target drones can be easily configured to simulate various types of air defense threats, including attack aircrafts, various types of missiles and the latest dynamic asymmetric threats, such as high speed UAS / UAV systems both armed as unarmed. There are also target drones for, in the same way, simulate threats of land or naval kinds as anti-ship cruise missiles.
Veronte Autopilot and UAT target drones
Veronte Autopilot permits the integration of advanced functionalities, providing a high grade of reliability, operational safety and performance, while maintaining a low cost. This last generation autopilot has fully autonomous flight performance with a high degree of accuracy, from launch to recovery (in case the system is recoverable). The system architecture permits to control multiple target drones with a single operator and a control station for performing a wide variety of synchronized maneuvers.
Veronte permits the integration of a wide range of payloads on target drones, providing a high degree of, system and operation, automation, and considerably increasing the system capacity. The typical payloads that can be configured are: oil smoke, identification friend or foe (IFF), increased active and passive radar, electronic countermeasures, chaff, flares, infrared cameras, etc…
Veronte also embeds sensors for the operating at high speed and acceleration ranges (gyroscopes, analog and digital accelerometers, magnetometers, integrated GPS, dynamic pressure sensors…). It can be installed for controlling systems with speeds above 1.000Km/h and supporting continued maneuvers with accelerations up to 16G. The system also supports a wide range of external sensors, and they can be installed for specific applications.
Some advanced functionalities supported by Veronte for target drones are:
- Waypoint Route.
- Maintain speed, altitude and direction or any system variable.
- Seaskimming.
- Custom flight phases on request.
- Follow Me operations.
- Mission movement with reference to the control station.
- Landing on mobile platforms.
- Definition of no go areas.
- Limitation on safe flight zones.
- …
In conclusion, target drones combined with Veronte Autopilot provide a high performance, keeping low costs of acquisition and operation; being the perfect choice for training, evaluation and testing of advanced air defenses with respect to the operational needs on worldwide.