Schiebel has successfully completed trials for the Camcopter S-100 anmanned aircraft system (UAS) for the Belgian Navy. The tests demonstrated search and rescue as well as maritime surveillance capabilities.
Schiebel’s trials for the Belgian Navy were aimed at building an enhanced knowledge base and developing a successful concept of operations. This was particularly important for the use of UAS in support of search and rescue as well as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions.
For the demonstration flights, the helicopter was equipped with two payloads: the L3 Wescam MX-10 and the Overwatch Imaging PT-8 Oceanwatch, as well as an automatic identification system receiver and a rescue drop box. The flight trials included various search and rescue scenarios in a land-based setting in Lombardsijde and in a maritime environment in the naval port of Zeebrugge.
The flights were the first S-100 customer demonstration with the recently integrated PT-8 Oceanwatch payload. This wide-area maritime search capability offers a powerful naval patrol capacity and thus solves the challenge of searching for small objects over vast areas. The use of two payloads proved to be an ideal solution for the tested scenarios.
