V-BAT – In the Desert
Martin UAV and Northrop Grumman Technology Services (NGTS) have entered into a teaming agreement to bring the world’s first ducted fan vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) tactical UAS (TUAS), the “V-BAT”, to the United States Army.
In concert with the Army’s renewed focus on rapid innovation and deployment of truly tactical, runway and equipment independent UAS, NGTS will enter the FTUAS with perhaps the most unique and capable VTOL TUAS in production today.
“Martin UAV’s “V-BAT” is notably the most technologically advanced and uniquely capable Group 2/3 VTOL UAS system in production today,” said retired Col. Rob Sova, director unmanned systems integration center, Northrop Grumman Technology Services. “With Northrop Grumman’s proven UAS design, development, operational and logistics support, across the Department of Defense and specifically with the Army for more than 20 years with the Hunter system – neither the sky nor the runway are limiting factors. V-BAT is the future of Army tactical UAS.”
“The Northrop Grumman – Martin UAV Team brings an elite capability to the forefront of this competition”, said retired Col. Heath Niemi (USA (R)), Vice President of Global Sales & Development for Martin UAV. “In nearly 27 years in the UAS Army, I have never seen a system so perfectly suited to meet the needs of the Warfighter.
The Martin UAV V-BAT is commercially developed to fill critical operational needs in genuine, tactical and confined environments with a near-zero footprint – “equipment independent”. The safest tactical UAS in the space, the V-BAT is the only single-engine, ducted fan VTOL that has the ability to take off and land from a hover in a confined area, fly more than 8 hours in horizontal flight and make mid-flight transitions to “hover & stare” at any time throughout a given mission set.
Source: Press Release
Well, it is not “the world’s first ducted fan vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) tactical UAS (TUAS)”. Aurora Flight Sciences made the GoldenEye 80 vehicle, and Honeywell made a smaller one . . . .
In 45 days the Hummingbird(R) XRP will be formally announced as the truely first and only extended range and heavy payload group 3 VTOL with a 15 kW hybrid power system and a duration in excess of 9 hours and a payload capacity in excess of 75 pounds. In addition, it is multi-fuel, fully autonomous, and capable of deploying up to 4 parasitic drones for multi-tasked ISR. The base model has 8 hard points for the deployment of payloads under manual or autonomous control. Many more attributes will be announced in an upcoming press release. The XRP has taken 6 years to develop and went into production in November 2018.