Royal Navy's drone squadron builds first remotely piloted quadcopter

The Royal Navy's drone squadron has built its first quadcopter drone.

The remotely piloted uncrewed air system could be used as a testbed for sensors and delivery of other payloads, the Navy said.

The 20kg drone is called Walrus after the Second World War flying boats pioneered by 700 Naval Air Squadron.

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700X Naval Air Squadron is the Senior Service's expert unit in the research, training and development of remotely piloted aerial systems.

It has a mix of naval personnel, civil servants and contractors, based at RNAS Culdrose in Cornwall and uses nearby Predannack Airfield for testing.

Lieutenant Commander Martin Howard, the squadron's commanding officer, said: "This project is just one strand of our work in researching, evaluating and deploying RPAS technology at the forefront of Royal Navy operations.

"It's an important step in gathering knowledge and expertise in this ever-evolving field. As a squadron, we already train personnel across defence in the use of RPAS.

"We have flights which deploy the Puma air system to warships around the world and we are constantly testing and evaluating new systems from industry.

"This work will serve to strengthen all our outputs and is an important step forward for the Royal Navy."

It comes after the MOD's announcement of 250 more high-tech drones for the UK Armed Forces, under a £129m contract with Lockheed Martin.

The 159 rotary-wing Indago 4 devices and 105 fixed-wing Stalker VXE30 drones, will replace the existing Mini Uncrewed Aerial Systems (MUAS) such as Desert Hawk 3.

Both of the new devices are capable of locating and identifying targets far from the operator and are due to be operational by the end of 2024.