38 Dossier | Schiebel Camcopter third-party, should an end-user have a preference for mission planning and control management.” Future Around three decades have passed since Hans Georg Schiebel’s first vague idea of making an aerial automated mine detector, and two decades since development of the S-100 kicked off. Hunter estimates that today as much as 20% of Schiebel’s annual turnover is reinvested into its aerospace engineering department, particularly towards integrating new mission sensors and capabilities, with ASW taking up most of this work in the last few years. “When the Cold War ended, countless analysts declared that no-one was going to build submarines, but in fact there has been a huge growth in their number and use worldwide,” he adds. “We’ve shown the S-100 can drop sonobuoys, USVs and micro-AUVs for closer detection in the water, and we’re about to show what it can do with surface-penetrating Lidar. And, while Johannes and his team are always looking for new r&d pathways to reoptimise or expand the S-100 towards navies’ latest capability requirements, we’re also expanding our product portfolio with the S-300.” The S-300 is to be a considerably larger UAV for users with the budget and physical space to accommodate and benefit from its greater endurance and payload limit. As of writing, it is expected to fly for up to 24 hours with a 50 kg payload, although up to 340 kg (including fuel) carrycapacity will be possible within the 660 kg MTOW helicopter. Schiebel emphasises that the S-100 is probably not yet at mid-life, let alone being phased out in favour of the S-300: they are very different aircraft for very different use cases. The company continuously reviews the S-100 for opportunities to update a component or software module wherever possible, and also for signs of whether a design ceiling is ever truly being reached; for instance, if the core structure or software is at the limit of how far it can leverage the kind of cutting-edge technology its end-users want it to work with. “If we ever do see the S-100’s design end in sight then we will likely take a deep dive into the core system concept, and make a totally new, uncrewed aircraft system from scratch,” Hecht muses. “Then we will futureproof it, one module at a time, and flight-test it to failure as rapidly and repeatedly as we can, so that it is state of the art for at least the next 30 years, just as we did 20 years ago.” August/September 2024 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Composite materials: In-house Engines: In-house Antennas: Pidso GNSS: NovAtel Inc Computers: Roda computer GmbH Transponders: Sagetech Avionics, Inc AIS receivers: Shine Micro, Inc Multi-sensor array payloads: Siemens EO/IR gimbals: L3Harris WESCAM EO/IR gimbals: Trakka Systems Wide-area optical sensors: Overwatch Imaging Emissions sensors: Aeromon Optical gas imagers: Sensia Solutions Synthetic aperture radars: Leonardo Synthetic aperture radars: Thales Synthetic aperture radars: IMSAR Bathymetric Lidars: Areté Bathymetric Lidars: RIEGL Sonobuoy replay payloads: Thales Micro-AUVs (delivered and deployed aerially as mission payloads): Seaber Autonomous profiling floats (delivered and deployed aerially as mission payloads): Teledyne APEX FPV cameras: Sony Key suppliers Schiebel is now developing its S-300 as a larger UAV for customers seeking increased payloads and flight endurances
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