- Title: FRANCE: UAVs market growing despite financial crisis
- Date: 18th June 2009
- Summary: CUTAWAY EXHIBITION (SOUNDBITE) (English) STEFAN ZOLLER CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF EADS DEFENCE AND SECURITY SAYING: "On one side we have crisis, on the other hand we have defence spending that are by nature very long term. We have long lead times, we have long engineering production cycles that is for a fighter aircraft many many decades which means a crisis as such won't impact these long cycles." VARIOUS OF UAVs ON DISPLAY GEORGE GUERRA VICE PRESIDENT HALE SYSTEMS OF NORTHTHROP GRUMMAN LOOKING AT PLANES (SOUNDBITE) (English) GEORGE GUERRA VICE PRESIDENT HALE SYSTEMS OF NORTHTHROP GRUMMAN SAYING: "The key features the the UAVs bring that we have in Northrop Grumman is that they are all autonomous so when I say autonomy in that basically it's as simple as taking a mouse and the click of a mouse and you can actually launch one of these systems on a mission so that the technology's really evolved, but as we're continuing to use them we're experiencing that, you know, we can enhance these capabilities and add more features." CUTAWAY UAV ENGINE (SOUNDBITE) (English) GEORGE GUERRA VICE PRESIDENT HALE SYSTEMS OF NORTHTHROP GRUMMAN SAYING: "Global Hawk it's a very unique capability system, it has the ability to fly to 60 000 feet and can stay in an area for up to 32 hours. It has the ability to carry different sensors or different payloads for what it can do, so today that's a pretty unique capability that didn't exist a few years back, so this system today Global Hawk is combat proven, it's been used already, it has been deployed in theatre to support on the global war on terrorism." VARIOUS OF UAVs ON DISPLAY
- Embargoed: 3rd July 2009 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: France
- Country: France
- Topics: Industry
- Reuters ID: LVA4XBSHD1IAXTEXRTBK6F8E1NH7
- Story Text: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are on show for the first time at the Paris Air Show, celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.
For the first time Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV's) were on exhibit at the Paris Air Show on Wednesday (June 17), the 100th anniversary of the show.
Even as the Camcopter S-100, an auto-piloted helicopter made in Austria, goes through its paces at Le Bourget, many manufacturers around the world are gearing up for growing UAV sales.
"The UAV market is generally growing very rapidly, so although everybody talks about crisis around, this segment of the market still is pushing ahead at a good speed. Customers divide actually into civilian industrial security applications like pipeline security and so forth, all the way to governmental military like border security and general reconnassaince and surveillance," said Andreas Schiewbel, CEO of the Shiebel, the company which makes the camcopter.
Despite a global financial crisis and cutbacks in the defence budgets of many countries, UAV sales are being maintained.
Massive purchases of these portable systems are being driven their proven capabilities in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"In the past the UAV's market was mainly based on technical UAVs, smaller ones that were not as capable. Now we see the next generation of UAVs fielded in the market and the more missions those UAVs will fulfil the more the market will emerge. I feel it will see a huge growth because the numerous missions that those aircraft can deliver," Stefan Zoller, Chief Executive of EADS told Reuters. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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