Powered by a Rolls-Royce Safran Helicopter Engines (HE) Adour Mk951 engine, the UK’s new Taranis unmanned aerial vehicle – described as ‘the most advanced air system to be conceived, designed and built in the UK’ has completed a successful first flight.
The demonstrator aircraft, designed and built by BAE Systems, made a perfect take-off, rotation, ‘climb-out’ and landing during its 15 minute first flight. A number of flights then took place in 2013 of up to one hour in duration and at a variety of altitudes and speeds.
Taranis, named after the Celtic god of thunder, is the result of one-and-a-half-million man hours of work by the UK’s leading scientists, aerodynamicists and systems engineers from 250 UK companies.
The aircraft has been designed to demonstrate the UK’s ability to create an unmanned air system which, under the control of a human operator, is capable of undertaking sustained surveillance, marking targets, gathering intelligence, deterring adversaries and carrying out strikes in hostile territory.