The British Army has purchased Israel's EMIT Sparrow unmanned air vehicle system for evaluation in its indirect fire precision attack programme (IFPA), which will provide the army's artillery units with greater precision.
The Sparrow has a 2.44m (8ft) wingspan, is pusher prop driven with a top speed of 100kt (185km/h), has a range of more than 110km (59.5nm), an endurance of over 4h, a payload capacity of 12kg (26.5lb), has a maximum take-off weight of 4kg and uses parachute recovery.
Its intelligence gathering configuration uses an electro-optical, day/night, stabilized payload and the vehicle has fully autonomous flight and surveillance and recognition capabilities. The Sparrow was selected as part of the concept proof phase of the IFPA programme.
According to EMIT's general manger, Zeev Nahamoni, the Sparrow will be tested to determine the operational requirements of the UAV that will be used for IFPA.
Part of that testing involves the Sparrow being used as a loitering munition capability demonstrator. EMIT says that the army's operational requirement for the demonstrator is a system with a range of over 150km (81nm).
Source: FlightGlobal.com
