Platforms
Three configurations, and what each one costs you.
Configuration is the first decision on any programme and the one that is hardest to revisit later. These are the three families we build from, and the reasons a mission tends to end up in one rather than another.
Range1
The longest endurance of the three, and the most demanding to launch and recover. Where a mission is measured in hours and kilometres rather than minutes and metres, this is usually the starting point, and the alternatives are ways of avoiding the runway at some cost elsewhere.
- Endurance
- Longest of the three
- Launch
- Runway, catapult or hand
- Recovery
- Belly landing, net or parachute
- Suited to
- Survey, corridor patrol, long transits
- Trade-off
- Cannot hold position or land in a clearing
Hover2
Precise position holding and the highest payload for a given size, paid for in endurance. A reasonable exchange where precision is the requirement, and a poor one where it is not.
- Endurance
- Shortest of the three
- Launch
- Anywhere it can stand
- Payload
- Highest for its size
- Suited to
- Inspection, confined spaces, precise hold
- Trade-off
- Power hungry, and wind costs it dearly
Hybrid3
Vertical launch and recovery with cruise efficiency close to a fixed wing. Mechanically the most complex of the three, and the transition between the two flight regimes absorbs most of the engineering effort. Often the only configuration that makes a mission possible where there is no prepared ground.
- Endurance
- Close to fixed wing in cruise
- Launch
- Vertical, from unprepared ground
- Complexity
- Highest of the three
- Suited to
- Range without infrastructure
- Trade-off
- Added weight and analysis effort
Outside the three
A good deal of the work does not fit a family.
Tethered platforms, counter-UAS work, launch and recovery equipment, tandem wings, ducted configurations, and aircraft built around a sensor somebody else made. Unusual requirements are common enough that they are not treated as unusual here.
Ground segment
The aircraft is half of it.
Every platform arrives with something on the ground: a control station, a case, a charging routine, and a way of getting data into whatever your organisation already uses. That side is built to the same specification as the airframe, since it is what your people handle every day.
Ground control systems →