Alpha Unmanned Systems

Alpha Unmanned Systems is a Spanish manufacturer of small unmanned helicopter aircraft, founded in 2014 and headquartered in San Sebastián de los Reyes, near Madrid. The company designs, develops and manufactures single-rotor helicopter UAVs for intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (ISTAR) work, maritime patrol, border control and civil inspection tasks, and holds ISO 9001 certification along with an Experimental Airworthiness Certificate from the Spanish Army and a Beyond Line of Sight (BLOS) flight permit.

Products

The company's helicopter UAV family includes the Sniper, an early single-rotor platform that Alpha Unmanned Systems used for early ISTAR and maritime search-and-rescue demonstrations before retiring it in 2017; the Alpha 800, a mini tactical helicopter UAV introduced in February 2017 as the Sniper's direct successor and acquired by the Spanish Army in 2018; and the Alpha 900, a larger, STANAG 4738-compliant maritime helicopter UAV developed from 2019 that has since been selected by Spain's Navy, the U.S. Department of Defense, and coast guard and border agencies in Greece, Indonesia, Bulgaria and Georgia. The company also produces ground control stations, tracking antennas and its own heavy-fuel powerplant for these aircraft.

Alpha Unmanned Systems states that weaponization of its platforms is not a company objective, positioning its aircraft for surveillance, reconnaissance, target-acquisition support and civil applications rather than as strike systems.