For aerospace professional Annalisa Russell-Smith FRAeS, the benefits of drone technology first became apparent while she was working in the media industry in the USA over a decade ago.
“The early days of my film-making and storytelling business presented a few problems I thought I could solve using drones to fly a camera instead of just carrying one around,” she says.
“I’ve always been an early adopter of technology, so adding drones seemed like a natural progression. You can get really cool shots when you can move a camera really smoothly without heavy dolly equipment.”
That realisation sparked a wider interest in using the emerging and disruptive technology, and after moving back to the UK in 2018 she embarked on a commercial drone pilot training course provided by Flyby Technology.
Established by former Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter pilot Jon Parker, the company was impressed by what it saw, and soon began using her storytelling services to promote its activities. Then the Covid-19 pandemic struck.
Through its regulatory and compliance expertise and as a training provider, York-based Flyby became involved in a ground-breaking trial to develop beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations using unmanned air vehicles (UAVs).
During the trials, run by Apian for the National Health Service from late 2020 into 2021, BVLOS drones were flown between Thorney Island near Portsmouth, Hampshire and St Mary’s Hospital in Newport on the Isle of Wight, ferrying chemotherapy supplies across the busy waterway of the Solent.
“We wrote the first operational safety case for complex urban flight, over water that was accepted by the CAA [Civil Aviation Authority],” Russell-Smith notes. That required the creation of a temporary danger area and flight corridor, and establishing best practice for operations. “We also designed and developed the BVLOS pilot training programme, trained the pilots and provided the operational expertise for the success of the trial,” she adds.
“We wanted to set the standard for drone operations so that the regulator felt like they had a safe pair of hands for something that was – in civilian terms – very new,” she says.
PILOT QUALIFICATION
During the course of the project, Russell-Smith became the first civilian woman in the UK to qualify as a BVLOS drone pilot.
“We were very proud to do something for the country in a time of need,” she says of the project.
“Problem-solving is at the heart of what we do,” she said during a presentation to the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) in London earlier this year. As an example, she points to the inspiration behind Flyby’s Jackal aircraft: a request from the Comoros Islands government to help it provide inter-island logistics in a “fast and efficient” manner using a drone capable of carrying a cargo of up to 35kg (77lb).
“We found it quite a challenge to continue developing our drones in the UK, because the idea that you have to have a temporary danger area in order to fly something that weighs more than 25kg is quite limiting. So we went to Turkey, not just to build and develop prototypes, but to be able to fly. Having a test range without restrictions was very useful to us.”
With its vertical take-off and landing capability, the Jackal rapidly emerged as a design with strong operational potential for use cases both civilian and military.
“It’s such an exciting place to be. We are ahead of the market, and can see the potential and the need.”
In December 2022, she became Flyby’s chief strategy officer, as the company’s public profile soared following another trial – this time with the RAF’s Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO), following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Having become aware of Flyby’s work, the RCO sponsored an innovative trial using two prototype Jackal UAVs to conduct static and tethered firings of Thales’s supersonic Martlet lightweight multirole missile, or LMM.
Demonstrating their agility, Flyby and the Thales Belfast-team completed the project – from “flash to bang” – within an astonishing six-week period.
While the Jackal is not yet operational, Russell-Smith says Flyby is around six months from mass production, with the right investment.
“We’ve had an awful lot of interest from around the world for our systems and our expertise,” she says.
“We don’t sell aircraft off the shelf or out of a catalogue. Technology changes at such a rapid rate and our aircraft are in continuous, spiral development to remain relevant, especially for our warfighters.
“Large defence contractors are not used to subcontracting to a small company like ours, but we have to break that paradigm to keep the agility and speed required to develop tomorrow’s capabilities today – not yesterday’s capabilities tomorrow,” she argues.
The company’s current work includes advancing a concept named Mayhem – a cruise missile-type design which could also serve in an air-launched decoy role. And it is eyeing hypersonic flight with the reusable Vandal airframe, with potential uses to include performing electronic warfare tasks.
“We have turned upside down how you think about designing things,” she says. “Designing to what is possible is really important, and changing the way that you think about the engineering of new products. For example, we can build an aircraft around an engine that someone else has developed and de-risk testing because there is no pilot in the cockpit.”
TRAILBLAZING RECOGNITION
In recognition of her trailblazing work, Russell-Smith was in 2023 inducted to the Women in Emerging Aviation Technologies Hall of Fame at the Smithsonian Air and Space Power Museum.
For a self-professed “gadget freak” who grew up near the site of Supermarine’s headquarters in Southampton, and whose grandfather was a fighter pilot in the First World War, such recognition only inspires further success.
“Creative thinking is a skill that we don’t pay enough attention to,” she says. “It’s important to foster those minds, in education through to industry, defence, space, engineering, wherever it is. You have to be able to imagine something first.
“It doesn’t really matter at what stage you are in your career. If you have the interest, the drive, ambition and a little bit of imagination and creativity to just get stuck in and make things happen, you can.
“You just have to go for it – if you don’t, you’ll never know if it can be done.”
And, she notes, the potential future applications for drones and their supporting technologies “are probably only limited by our imagination”.
