Saab’s Skeldar VTOL UAV has returned from deployed operations with the Spanish Navy, although the company is hopeful that further contracts will come to fruition.
One system consisting of two aircraft was deployed to the Gulf of Aden as part of the EU Atalanta operation on-board the BAM Meteoro offshore patrol vessel with the Spanish Navy, and the deployment finished in November with equipment back in Sweden by December.
The three month operation was cut short, as permitted under the terms of the contract, due to the navy having completed its mission ahead of schedule. The deployment followed integration trials on-board the BAM Relámpago in the waters outside the Canary Islands.
‘This was a limited three month contract, but we hope to get a new contract for that,’ Hans Burgland, director of marketing for UAS and future products, told Shephard during the Singapore Airshow.
Burgland said that feedback from the operation was that the wrong sensor system was chosen, and the company and navy would reassess the payload choice for any potential future contracts. The sensor used during the operations was a Goodrich Tase 400.
‘For the new contract we’d offer a different sensor,’ he noted. ‘We had some technological issues at the beginning so didn’t start at the planned time.
‘The performance was pretty good,’ he affirmed. ‘It was a very good experience for us to fly off the ship.’
He said that there are programmes coming up in the Asia-Pacific region that Saab is targeting: ‘We have been bidding in Malaysia for example, and that has just not been decided on yet.’
Burgland adhered to contract signings that are expected to happen ‘this month’ although he could not offer further details.
Meanwhile progress is being made with pitching the Skeldar to a domestic customer Sweden: ‘We hope to see a tender coming out in April,’ he noted.
Saab is looking to test the Skeldar off the Swedish Navy’s Visby-class corvettes, although budget issues in Sweden have prevented a contract signing so far.
‘We would like to see Skeldar with the Swedish Navy when they go to Somalia,’ he said.
On 11 February it was announced that the Schiebel S-100 Camcopter was due to be used by the Italian Navy in anti-piracy missions, which Burgland said is a test programme that Saab also hopes to carry out with the Italian Navy.
‘We know what’s going on there any we’re talking to Italy,’ he said.