25 flight hours), an optimal cruise speed of 55 kts and a top airspeed of 100 kts. All this has made the S-100 desirable for frontier use cases, including US Special Operations Command (SOCOM), as Schiebel’s business development head, Neil Hunter, tells us: “We had a 10-year contract through Boeing as the prime, and we sold over 50 aircraft to SOCOM. We never found out exactly what they did with them; however, they definitely flew them in the maritime domain, and in an expeditionary sense, to great success. “Although they lost some funding after Trump came into power and didn’t buy further units, we’re now re-entering the US market via talks and activity with the US Navy.” Heading east, one sees Camcopters being flown by European, Middle Eastern and other Asian countries, as well as the Royal Australian Navy, and Schiebel anticipates closing its first contract with a South American country soon. This global network of customers is catered to from not only Schiebel’s Austrian head office and factory, but also from MRO facilities and partners in places such as the UAE, India and Australia, and its newest production and repair facility in France. “And though 70-80% of our customers are military, and mostly navies, given our ability to autonomously land on moving ship decks, we’re progressing in several civil and commercial areas too,” Hunter notes. “Being able to carry a big, 10 in [25.4 cm], hi-res EO/IR gimbal means we can identify people that have fallen out of boats over great distances. Bristow in the UK, for instance, were the first people doing real search-and-rescue using S-100s in the English Channel, and we’ve had a big contract with the European Maritime Safety Agency [EMSA] since 2019 that has seen them deploy S-100s from Denmark to Spain and the Mediterranean, even on board German police ships.” While most EMSA work has been ISR missions, a significant and rapidly growing application for the S-100 is emissions control. With the International Maritime Organisation having placed sulphur emission caps on ships in 2020, EMSA’s Camcopters increasingly fly with sensors capable of detecting and measuring dozens of different gases and particulates, and they autonomously follow behind commercial vessels recording their exhaust output as evidence to incriminate those polluting illegally. “Helicopter flight crews hate the idea of hovering bored behind a container ship, mindlessly recording data and inhaling fumes, so it’s exactly what a UAV should be used for,” Hunter observes. “These laws are recent, so it’s still a very new application, but EMSA’s getting very busy with it around Rotterdam and the English Channel, where you have possibly the most congested shipping lane in the world, and we’re already having conversations with users across parts of Asia, including the Indian Ocean, about manufacturing Camcopters for them to track ships that aren’t complying with these new regulations.” Schiebel Camcopter | Dossier Uncrewed Systems Technology | August/September 2024 The Schiebel Camcopter S-100 is a 200 kg helicopter UAV that was conceived roughly 30 years ago, and has flown with 40 different customers worldwide (Images courtesy of Schiebel) A major target of the Camcopter’s engineering has been the ability to carry large, 25 cm-diameter gimbals for critical maritime operations, such as search and rescue or naval ISR
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