Date: 20 May 2004
A Texas company has delivered the latest American small UAV to the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence.
The Buster system, manufactured by Mission Technologies Inc., will be part of an ongoing Joint UAV Experimentation Programme in the United Kingdom. The JUEP Programme will evaluate the potential roles and military use of UAVs for the UK’s Armed Forces.
“Small UAVs will allow the soldier to see what is over the next hill, they are less costly and can be adapted to many new roles, from scout use and convoy watch to base protection and SOF missions,” Mission Technologies told www.uavworld.com.
The Buster is an unmanned surveillance aerial vehicle (weighing just over 10lb) in the small UAV class. A system comprises two or more air vehicles, a ground control station and a launcher and is presently being supplied and operated by the US Army’s Night Vision Labs, Fort Belvoir, Virginia, in the United States. It has been employed extensively in network centric exercises, said the company, to prove the effectiveness of supplying video to other platforms.
The system was shown to the British Forces at an October 2003 event organised by the UK Ministry of Defence at Larkhill in Wiltshire. It has been developed under US Army funding to provide small units over-the-hill surveillance and reconnaissance. Typical operating altitude of the system is approximately 500 feet above ground level. It has also flown at 10,000 feet plus above sea level.
Mission Technologies, Inc. is also the home of two other air vehicles - The Hellfox, a platform that has 100 pounds of payload and operates from unprepared short fields without a launcher, and the Mini-Vanguard, a close-range UAV capable of carrying a 45 lb payload. Mini-Vanguard has operated in Northern Sweden in extremely cold temperatures.