BAE Systems

BAE Systems is a British multinational aerospace, defence and security company formed on 30 November 1999 through the merger of British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems, headquartered in London. It builds military aircraft, naval ships, armoured vehicles and defence electronics, and has run several unmanned-aircraft technology demonstrator programmes for the UK Ministry of Defence.

History and products

BAE Systems declassified its autonomous HERTI (High Endurance Rapid Technology Insertion) demonstrator in 2006, one of its early self-navigating UAV projects, and later flew the smaller Corax low-observable demonstrator. Its highest-profile programme, Taranis, first flew in 2013 as a stealthy unmanned combat air vehicle technology demonstrator built with Rolls-Royce, GE Aviation Systems and QinetiQ; the technologies it proved have since fed into the UK's Tempest future combat air programme and earlier Anglo-French studies. BAE Systems has not put an unmanned combat aircraft into production, focusing instead on demonstrators that inform its crewed and autonomous fast-jet development.

Products on this site

The Taranis is BAE Systems' stealth UCAV technology demonstrator. The HERTI was an earlier autonomous surveillance demonstrator, and the Corax was a smaller low-observable UAV project.