AME Unmanned Air Systems (AME UAS) is displaying the Fury 1500 Small Tactical Unmanned Aerial System (STUAS) for the first time at the Paris Air Show 2011. The UAV has recently demonstrated flying powered by a heavy fuel engine. The use of JP8 significantly increases the capability of the system, decreasing the logistical footprint of the system while increasing its endurance substantially.
Fury 1500 UAV
The Fury 1500 is tailored to address multiple warfighter requirements. Designed for a broad range of missions and long endurance, Fury 1500’s large payload volume and power capacity can support several payloads simultaneously and provide for a flexible, multi-mission capability not currently available with other UAS platforms. The Fury 1500 is a long-endurance, survivable, and runway-independent Multi-INT UAS, providing the large (multi-payload) capacity needed to satisfy critical requirements for the Warfighter.
“The new heavy-fuel high-endurance version of the Fury 1500 will allow for long-duration ISR and EW special missions, ensuring significantly more “on-target” dwell time for special mission operations,” said John Purvis, President and CEO of AME UAS.
The Fury design was developed in response to specific U.S. military requirements. The first model, Fury 1200 made the first flight in 2008. Since 2010 AME has been developing the Fury platform for the ‘Sand Dragon’, a lightweight unmanned aircraft carrying miniature dual-band radar and an EO/IR sensor. The U.S. Air Force awarded AME 13.3 million last year, to produce four Sand Dragon systems. The project is an extension of AFRL’s Gotcha program designed to collect volumetric synthetic-aperture radar data from an aircraft circling and staring at an urban area and process it into real-time target tracks. The specific model of the ‘Fury’ platform selected for Sand Dragon identified as ‘Fury B’, has enough payload volume and weight to carry a multi-sensor payload on missions extending more than 24. The heavy-fuel engine was critical to enable operation of the UAV from austere forward sites.
The Fury 1500 can be launched from a rail launcher; the company has recently tested the vehicle with a Robonic premium UAV Launcher System supplied by Robonic Ltd.
