The UK Royal Navy’s (RN’s) unmanned aviation trials and development unit, 700X Naval Air Squadron (NAS), has started to take delivery of a series of sub-20 kg commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) mini unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) to evaluate their performance and inform possible future acquisitions.
The aspiration is that these UASs will be categorised as military Class 1(b) by the Military Aviation Authority (MAA), so enabling operations to be conducted with similar limits to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) Small Unmanned Aircraft Mini Category (ostensibly 500 m range and 400 ft in altitude).
Source: IHS Jane’s 360