Working with US military and customers in Middle East
Lockheed Martin‘s expeditionary, runway-independent FURY unmanned air vehicle (UAV) received engine updates that will further increase its flight endurance up to 15 continuous hours. The company integrates and assembles the FURY propulsion system, i.e. he 1803 engine, which includes a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) core that maximises engine performance for mission applications.
“We’ve engineered FURY to bring the flight endurance and other advantages of much larger unmanned aircraft into a compact, effective, category three system,” Kevin Westfall, Director of Unmanned Systems at Lockheed Martin, explained. “Lockheed Martin has invested heavily to mature the incredible capabilities FURY can deliver, and we’re excited to bring this system to customers around the world.”
Leveraging open architecture design, FURY is both adaptable and reconfigurable to serve a multitude of military missions – including intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR), and cyber-electronic warfare (more on this later).
When prompted about customers, Lockheed Martin disclosed that the company is working with US military customers as well as customers in the Middle East.
Lockheed Martin has invested in the research, development and testing of FURY. The company’s target customer set has been those looking for Group 4 performance that can fly under the clouds without being easily spotted, and with a logistics tail closer to a Group 2 platform. FURY has been designed to meet a need for and has been evaluated against several measures of performance during company led demonstrations. “As the customer community continues to hone requirements, we have continued to hone our design in areas of endurance, payload offerings for other missions, and enhancements to the current mission capabilities,” the company concluded.
DPM