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PARIS—Thales has begun flight trials of its SwarmMaster system that aims to allow uncrewed air systems to collectively work together under the control of a single operator.
The initial use case involves seven air vehicles operating as a swarm, though the operational number could be higher, said Cécilia Aguero, director of Drones Systems at the French defense company. The initial work is being done with quadcopter-type drones but the system is being designed to be able to work with any number of system types, she said during a presentation at Eurosatory.
Thales aims to have the initial SwarmMaster product available in the market from next year, Aguero said. Experiments are already taking place with the French military.
The swarm can consist of either homogenous vehicle types or be heterogenous. Some of the systems could be performing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance-type operations, while others might be loitering munitions to engage discovered targets.
Thales also would integrate its Cortaix artificial intelligence system for parts to help with functions such as automatic target recognition.
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