First UK flight for the Watchkeeper UAS
Which arrived nearly 2 years after the other first flight
Watchkeeper First Flight
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3 Comments
Remind me why do we need this?
It is nowhere near as useful as the Predator or Reaper!!
Oh yes to establish a UAV capability in the UK!!! Ummm… Israeli design and build with French sensors!!! meanwhile BAE’s have been designing and building UK equivalents for ages and the UK have not bought any!!!
Bloody marvellous…
And we have been operating the non watchkeeper version in afghanistan for quite some time, alongside reaper!
I believe the advantage that watchkeeper has is that it can carry its EO and SAR payloads and use them at the same time, I think predator/reaper can only carry one at a time so aren’t truely all weather assets. Its got pretty much the same performance as the predator and wasn’t procured to do the hunter-killer role that the reapers do.
Yes the spec is probably behind the curve somewhat, but it is an improvement, and i don’t think any of the BAE prototypes are close to operationally ready apart from Mantis