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18 G rowing up on a farm in Yorkshire in the north of England, Jonathan Bailey enjoyed tinkering with and eventually fixing farm machinery, an interest that dovetailed with his favourite subjects at school of science and sports. His route into engineering was through technical college, where he studied electronics, followed by an apprenticeship and, eventually, a university degree. His involvement with unmanned systems came via armoured fighting vehicles and military comms, joining Thales (then Racal) in 2000 for the start of the British Army’s Watchkeeper UAV programme to replace the Phoenix system. Fast forward 20 years and he is now responsible for UAS, electronic warfare and radar at Thales UK, and for the safety of military flying at the West Wales UAV Centre. Although he admits to knowing very little about UAVs before he started on the Watchkeeper, his systems integration experience with Vickers Defence and BAE Systems stood him in good stead for the role of chief systems engineer for the programme feasibility study and the project development proposal. Partnered with Elbit, Thales won the contract for full production of the Watchkeeper in 2005. “The UK’s Ministry of Defence had selected several companies to do initial studies – several years of studies – on what the Army wanted, comparing rotary and fixed-wing platforms, size and payload combinations,” he says. “There was a group of us who were learning as we went along, and teaming up with Elbit brought a lot of experience with airborne systems. I learned a lot from them,” he says. One UK member of the team was Barry Trimmer, who is now technical vice-president for Thales Aerospace and who Bailey credits with imparting a lot of knowledge to him. Mission and flight control aspects One of the most important lessons centred on how to separate the safety aspects of a system’s architecture from the mission aspects. “It is essential to keep your flight management systems separate from your mission systems,” Bailey says. “The mission system looks after payloads, while the flight management system looks after the control of the aircraft.” He stresses that it is much better to develop the flight management system and then leave it alone as far as possible, Thales UK’s UAV supremo shares with Peter Donaldson the highlights and key lessons of his career so far Military history Accountable for military flying from the West Wales UAV Centre, Bailey is responsible for minimising the risk to life, using qualitative and quantitative evidence (Courtesy of Thales) February/March 2020 | Unmanned Systems Technology