Insitu's ScanEage succesfully meets Navy's heavy fuel requirements
Twenty-eight hour flight, a record for the craft, proves the heavy-fuel concept to a Navy interested both in safety and improved logistics; cold-weather flight overcomes traditional temperature challenges with heavy fuel
Bingen, Washington-based Insitu is feeling pretty gassed up this week. The company this week announced that it managed a long endurance flight of the company’s ScanEagle UAV — not normally a big deal except that the drone used heavy fuel engine and made its longest flight to date, 28 hours and 44 minutes.
Military planners have put the development of a heavy-fuel capability for UAVs as a high-priority to satisfy the safety concerns of naval operations and to streamline logistics challenges. The previous longest flight on a ScanEagle was 22 hours and 10 minutes using gasoline. This flight also tested ScanEagle’s ability to handle rough weather conditions. “Historically, heavy fuel engines have been a challenge to operate in cold environments, but our endurance flight was conducted in temperatures ranging from -16 degrees C to -6 degrees C and we observed no problems,” reported Insitu engineer Paul Field.
-read more in this company news release
