Swedish/Swiss JV Pushing UAVs

UMS Skeldar, the newly-formed joint venture between Saab and Swiss UAV company UMS Aero, can be found here on the stand of its regional partner CWT Defense Services (D87). The stand features full-scale models of the Skeldar rotary-wing UAV that Saab developed, and the smaller R350 unmanned helicopter that UMSdesigned. CWT is a diversified Singaporean logistics and engineering services company that has provided equipment and services to the Singapore armed forces.

Jacob Baumann, UMS Skeldar CEO, said that Singapore was a natural choice for the launch of the joint venture’s platforms, systems and managed services. It is targeting the Asia Pacific and Middle East as priority regions, and says it has already agreed contracts with governments in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and the UAE. Alex Yang, managing director of CWT Aerospace Services, told AIN that the Indonesian military was a customer for the UMS F330, a mid-size fixed-wing UAV.

The Skeldar V-200 can be launched from ships, traveling road convoys or stationary sites and can hover for hours while relaying surveillance imagery to a control station or remote video terminal. It is fully autonomous. TheF330 has a larger fixed-wing brother designed by UMS, the F720 with a 7.2-m wingspan which has flown, but is still being developed.

CWT’s Yang told AIN that the company aimed to offer turnkey solutions, including pilots, and would lease as well as sell the UMS Skeldar UAV lineup.

In addition to representing UMS Skeldar, CWT Aerospace Systems is also promoting micro-UAVs: an amphibious tri-rotor hybrid named Bullray from Rapid Composites in the U.S.; an electric-powered flying wing from a Slovenian company named Bramor rTK (real-Time Kinematics); and a quad-rotor from German company Microdrones, designated MD4.