UMS Skeldar’s V-200 has completed five-day long surveillance flight trial demonstrations aboard the OPV Turva as part of the Valvonta2 project led by the Finnish Border Guard and funded by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund.
The project aims to achieve an understanding of how authorities could use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for diverse and demanding operations at sea both now and in future scenarios.
As part of the trials, UMS Skeldar’s V-200 completed multiple operational flights and successfully demonstrated a range of features including automatic take-off and landing (ATOL) capabilities; vessel identification at different ranges and altitudes; search and rescue during both day and night; AIS; and transponder demonstrations.
To perform the missions, the Skeldar V-200 was simultaneously carrying a multiple sensor suite of Automatic Identification System (AIS), Wescam MX-8 Electro-Optical and Infrared (EO/IR) sensors as well as the high-capacity Leonardo Pico-SAR Synthetic Aperture Radar.
“These flight trials demonstrate that the Skeldar V-200 platform is the perfect fully-developed ATOL choice for maritime missions.”, explains Stefan Hyltberg, Programme Manager for UMS Skeldar. “Its adeptness at operating from a range of naval ships using market-leading heavy-fuel Hirth Engines in combination with its multiple sensor carrying capability give the Skeldar V-200 a real advantage over its competitors. Our team is proud to have its work recognised by the Finnish Border Guard.”
The platform of choice for maritime-based missions worldwide, the V-200 has been previously selected by the German, Royal Canadian, Belgian and Royal Netherlands Navies, providing embedded ‘eye in the sky’ intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities to enhance its capacity to perform primary and secondary missions.
Hyltberg concludes: “As we have proven with these trials, the Skeldar V-200 continues to provide best-in-class capabilities for customers. Continuous development of our Skeldar V-200 and V-150 aims to not only validate the platforms’ capabilities but also analyse customer requirements with a view to increasing the service suite UMS Skeldar provides.”
