LAAD 2011: Brazilian companies vie for local UAV market

Several Brazilian companies used the LAAD defence exhibition in Rio de Janeiro this week to pitch indigenous UAV designs for various government requirements.

Among the UAVs on display was the Sarvant surveillance UAV equipped with a synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which OrbiSat has developed with assistance from the Brazilian government.

A spokesman for the company said the totally autonomous, push-pull twin motored UAV was designed towards a government requirement to use the SAR payload to map the topography of the Amazon region.

Development of the Sarvant began some 12 months ago and first flight tests are expected to take place in the second half of 2011.

Alongside OrbiSat, which has developed the SAR, Brazilian companies Aeroalcool (airframe) and AGX (flight controls) have also been involved in the project.

While the aircraft is fully autonomous, there is an option for man-in-the-loop operations.

With a 6m wingspan, the UAV has a maximum take-off weight of 140kg, a cruise speed of 200km/h and an endurance of 20 hours.

While the spokesman claimed that the Sarvant was the only UAV that was completely Brazilian-made, fellow UAV maker Flight Technologies disagreed and also claimed exclusive Brazilian content.

Flight Technologies used the show to highlight two UAV systems – Horus-100, which is based around the FS-02 AvantVision tactical UAV, and Horus-200, which employs the FS-01 Watchdog short-range UAV.

The latter has been in development since 2008 under a contract with the Brazilian army for a prototype system featuring three airframes. The aircraft were delivered in 2010 and the company is now awaiting a potential production contract from the army.

Operated by three people, the 70kg Horus-200 has an endurance of three hours, an operational altitude of 1500m and a range of 50km.

The short-range Horus-100 on the other hand can be hand-launched in less than four minutes and transported and operated by two people.

The system has also been matured through a Brazilian Army contract that was awarded in July 2009.

Providing streaming video and geo-referenced still photographs, the Horus-100 system features a backpack ground control station while the data can be sent to individual reception units, which are worn on the arm. This also allows the UAV to also act as a communications relay.

Co-founder of Flight Technologies, Nei Brasil, said while they had identified two or three other armed forces in Latin America with requirements that could be met by either system, the company was looking to first consolidate its position within Brazil.