Austria selects Cassidian Tracker UAS

Cassidian announced on 25 October that the Austrian Ministry of Defence has ordered six Tracker mini UAS with a total of 18 aircraft.

The purchase is part of the Austrian armed forces capability development plan and a further procurement of mini-UAS is intended between 2016 and 2017.

The competition for the contract was won by Survey Copter, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cassidian, responsible for the development and manufacturing of miniature fixed wing and rotary UAVs, in cooperation with the Kapsch Group, a Vienna headquartered international road telematics, information technology and telecommunications company.

The Tracker can be deployed for missions including detection, reconnaissance, identification, classification, tracking, over-the-hill targeting, target or axis designation, special force and anti-terrorism action, littoral / border control, force protection, convoy support, dismounted warfighter missions and military operations in urban terrain. Following a pre-programmed and reconfigurable plan in the course of the mission, the Tracker flies entirely automatically, which enables the operators to devote themselves to their reconnaissance assignment.

‘We are very proud to have been selected to introduce mini unmanned air systems with the Austrian forces, a further mark of Cassidian and Survey Copter european's credibility and leadership in this particularly fast-growing sector,’ said Jean-Marc Masenelli, MD of Survey Copter.

Composed of an aircraft and a ground station, the short-range mini-UAS Tracker is a hand-launched system, carried as a backpack. The ground station, consisting of two PCs and control units with joysticks, is coupled to a data link antenna tracking the aircraft in real-time.

Increasing situational awareness and reconnaissance capabilities, the Tracker features an advanced ergonomic man-machine interface, automatic and safe procedures, low-noise electric engines and is optimised to provide stealthy intelligence gathering capabilities for military, security and civil authorities. The system’s comprehensive technical features include visible-light and IR high-resolution cameras integrated in a T120 three-axis gyro-stabilised plug and play turret developed by Survey Copter.