PARIS — French defense electronics maker Thales is teaming up with U.S. startup Skydweller Aero, which makes a solar-powered drone with the wingspan of a Boeing 747, to offer an unmanned maritime-patrol aircraft that can remain on station for weeks to months at a time.
The package offered by the two companies will feature the same AI-powered radar that equips the French Navy’s Atlantique 2 crewed maritime-patrol aircraft, said Philippe Duhamel, Thales executive vice president for defense-mission systems, at the Paris Air Show on June 18, after the firms signed a memorandum of understanding.
Thales and Skydweller will initially target military customers, with Thales is now working to integrate the radar in the platform and hoping for contracts “very soon,” Duhamel said.
The system will cost “far less than a Reaper,” with operating costs a factor five to 10 lower than any comparable platform, said Sebastien Renouard, head of international development at Skydweller Aero, referring to the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper.
“It will be very disruptive,” he said.
Skydweller acts as a “pseudo satellite,” and combined with the Thales smart radar represents a “new paradigm for maritime surveillance,” according to Renouard. The drone is powered by more than 17,000 solar cells and can carry a payload of 400 kilograms.
Skydweller can operate “for days, weeks and months,” Renouard said. “We could certainly fly for a year at some point, but there will be intermediary steps, and those steps are related with the predictive maintenance of both the platform and the payload, because we have nobody on board taking care of this.” He said the company sees 90 days of continuous operation as the first big milestone.
The use case is very different from that of the ATL2 maritime patrol aircraft used by the French Navy, “which doesn’t fly for weeks,” Duhamel said. “Of course, ATL2 has many other functions that Skydweller doesn’t have. So it’s very complementary, it’s permanent surveillance.”
The maritime-patrol version of the Skydweller will be equipped with the Thales AirMaster S, an active electronically scanned array radar operating in the X-band, which Duhamel said has been primarily designed for maritime surveillance. The radar has a range of about 200 kilometers and is able to follow thousands of tracks simultaneously, both on the water and in the air, Duhamel said.
Skydweller is focusing initially on maritime surveillance, where the company feels it’s in a sweet spot as it’s an area where sovereignty is under attack and obtaining intelligence and surveillance is the most difficult, according to Renouard.
AI treatment of the data allows for target classification, limiting the data flow to operators and providing them with a better overview, while the low power consumption makes the AirMaster S suitable for drones, Duhamel said.
Thales and Skydweller have already received interest from several customers, and the companies are talking to military forces, civil emergency services and border control agencies in Europe and the United States, according to Renouard.
“The market for us certainly is military, but not only,” he said.
The solar-powered drone can operate non-stop up to around 40 degrees north and south of the Equator, as well in the polar regions during the summer, while operations during the polar winter would be limited to a day due to the available light, according to the Skydweller executive.
Rudy Ruitenberg is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. He started his career at Bloomberg News and has experience reporting on technology, commodity markets and politics.
