Advanced and various unmanned aerial systems (UASs) are being deployed today, in numbers, in military theaters around the world. Some of these systems were on display at the BAE Systems exhibit at Xponential Europe in Dusseldorf, including the company’s T-150, part of the T-Series heavy lift electric UASs.
“The T-150 can be deployed very rapidly and organically, in coordination with troops on the ground, carrying payloads of up to 68 kg,” said Rich Barrow CBE, Head of Business Development and Strategy, Systems and Data Exploitation at BAE Systems. “You can use it move essential items forward, ammunition or blood, for example. It’s fully electric, with batteries that are very quickly interchangeable.”
BAE Systems acquired Malloy Aeronautics, the manufacturer of the T-Series, in 2024. “We’ve also got the T-600,” Barrow said, “where you’re looking at much bigger payloads. We’re demonstrating a concept for a casualty evacuation, again support that you can move rapidly to get somebody who’s injured out of a hotspot, within the golden hour.”
TheT-150 and T-600 fold up for easy transport, in a van, an armored personnel carrier or similar vehicle. “These systems are ideal as support to somebody who wants to be covert, infil or exfil of troops, special operations, airborne assaults, and other contexts where you need stealth and speed,” Barrow said, “moving key items, in volumes, forward, without exposing convoys and personnel to risk.”
The company also spotlighted a number of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms. “We’ve got one that does vertical take-off, and then it switches to a petrol engine for conventional flight,” Barrow said, “eight hours endurance, 750 km range in a straight line, electronic optics or IR sensors or whatever you want.
“And there’s another one that does conventional take-off, not vertical take-off, and flies conventionally. The advantage there is you gain carrying capacity, you can load more fuel, and take it out to additional flight time, say 12 hours. These are operationally deployed, available today, easily transportable by whatever means you want, to wherever you want. You put her together and away you go.” BAE Systems’ drones are used by the U.S. Marines and UK Royal Marines, among others.
Market view
The first edition of Xponential Europe represented a new opportunity for companies like BAE Systems. “We wanted to come here to introduce ourselves a bit more to the European market,” said Barrow, “to meet potential customers but also see other people who are doing similar things.”
Barrow is a key member of FalconWorks, BAE Systems’ dedicated research and development division, focusing on advancing combat air capabilities. The initiative fosters innovation by collaborating with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), academic institutions, and government agencies.
“We like to work with SMEs,” Barrow said, “to pull those technologies through to our products. Right now, we’re looking at hybrid engines from Malloy, using electrical engines and trying to see how we might charge the batteries in flight. We’re also interested in talking to people about counter UAS, deployable ground stations and vehicles that can have command and control stations.
“We’re interested in tether, what these guys have got on their small drones over here. What would it take to put a tether onto a larger drone, a T-600, take a payload up, 100 meters in the air, for wide-area surveillance? Can I power that? Can I downlink the data through a fiber optic?”
“At FalconWorks, we’re interested right now in opportunities in Germany, Poland, eastern flank, up into the Baltics and the Nordics,” Barrow said. “Then we have elements down into the Mediterranean area, maritime surveillance, lots of different use cases. And we’ve got teams working the American market, the Middle East and Far East. Parts of our company are based out of Australia, so we’re working closely with them in that region as well. We’re global. We’re everywhere.”
