The Snark - the meanest VTOL UAV on the planet

October 29, 2005 Meet the Snark – an Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle of immense
capability that demonstrates just how far the breed has come in such a short
period of time. Constructed mainly of Carbon Fibre and Kevlar, the Snark is
light and fast (280 km/h), quiet (special rotor blades make it extremely quiet
), virtually invisible to radar or infrared detetection (it recycles its exhaust
gases and emits little heat) and can carry a payload of 680kg, offering the
ability to pack both massive firepower (enough to sink a ship) and surveillance
equipment (such as high res infrared cameras with a magnification of 7500). But
wait, there’s more, and this is the clincher. The Snark is the first UAV that
runs on diesel fuel, which means it can be easily integrated into any military
force – current UAVs require their own special fuel supply to be transported
with them whereas the entire US Army plans to run on a single one fuel - diesel.
Last and probably most importantly, the Snark can stay airborne for 24 hours at
a time, offering an unprecedented loiter time for a machine of this capability.

“The Mk I was giving us eight hours of range,”said Rogers. “The only problem was
that it ran on AVGAS and the military want everything to run on a single fuel.
So we made the decision to go with a heavy fuel engine and that has turned out
to give us a big advantage over the competition as we’re unique in that we’re
the only people with a VTOL UAV with a diesel engine.

“There’s a small fixed wing aircraft called the Diamond which is actually
powered by a small Mercedes Benz car engine but apart from that, we’re the only
ones with a diesel and we have created a purpose built engine for the task –
using engines built for automotive use often leads to problems because they’re
not designed to run flat-out all the time.

“The engine is designed and built by Delta Hawk in the United States and we’re
doing a lot of development work and we’ve taken the engine from 160 horsepower
to 245 bhp and we’re aiming to get it to a reliable 300 bhp in the near future.”

“As far as the Snark’s range, the Mk II extended flight duration to 11 hours and
we’ve currently extended that with the Mk III to 24.5 hours. But we’re not far
from some significant further developments and we think we can probably get the
range up to 30 hours with the payload extended to 2000lb.

In order to extend the range and payload to that extent, TGR Helicorp has
significantly reengineered every aspect of the Snark. “We’ve reversed the
rotation of the engine, developed and built a new long-life gearbox and we’re
attempting to significantly improve on the specifications I’ve already given
you,” says Rogers.

The secret to the next step will be in the remote electronic diesel injection
system,” says Rogers. “Normal electronic injection runs at 12,000psi, and we’re
in the process of developing an injection system with 33,000psi, which will
vaporise the droplets, improve the combustion and offer a range of performance
optimisation via the onboard computers that is not available anywhere else right
now.”

“It’s already a rocket, but we’re expecting much more,”he grins.

“It’s a full-size helicopter which is 28 feet long,14 feet high and six feet
wide”, says Trevor, “so we have a lot of potential yet.”

“The aircraft’s current empty weight is 1060 lb (480kg) and the gross weight is
2500 lb (1133 kg) and our payload is 1500lb (680 kg) which blows anything
comparable in the UAV area completely out the door. If we can achieve a reliable
2000lb (907 kg) payload, it will become just that much more capable.

“We have fitted 24 missiles, eight defence missiles that we build ourselves and
it can fit two Sidewinders too. We’ve even hung a Maverick under it too. It has
the potential to be seriously nasty.

“Each snark will sell for US$5 million and will come complete with its own base
station making it a very cost-effective one-man operation, autonomous flight
aircraft.

“The only aircraft that might vaguely be considered as competition to the snark
is the Drummond Fire Scout which is really a 331 Schweizer with 130 lb payload
and 65 knots and two hours of range. The specs vary depending on who you talk
to, but they’re not really in the ballpark compared to the Snark, and we’ve
still got a lot of development potential available to us.”

“The Snark Mk III will fly just before Christmas – after that, we’ll be
developing two distinct versions – one for the Army (the Land Snark), and one
for the Navy (the Sea Snark), and a civilian version of the Snark is under
development and will be unveiled in 2006.

Interested parties can contact Trevor via email.

"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire.
Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us)
off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give
them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you
for torturing the cat." Gunner