Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Saab, Swiss UAV Team On Rotorcraft

Saab, Swiss UAV Team On Rotorcraft
(NSI News Source Info) LINKOPING, Sweden - May 20, 2009: Swedish aerospace company Saab has struck a deal with Swiss UAV to collaborate on the development and marketing of rotorcraft unmanned air vehicles. The companies are expected May 20 to announce the signature of a deal that merges Saab's Skeldar and the smaller Swiss Neo and Koax into a single family of helicopter UAVs. "Our partnership establishes a long-term partnership to build a larger family of vehicles and integrating them with Saab's ground control station know-how," Pontus Kallen, managing director of Saab Aerosystems, told reporters here May 19. Kallen said he expected the vehicles to find applications in military and civilian markets capitalizing on Saab's ground control expertise. The Saab executive said that for the moment the deal was only a "strategic agreement" and declined to speculate whether the tie-up could be extended beyond that. No finance has been committed yet, "but we are looking at that," Kallen said. Swiss UAV is a small, privately held company based in Niederdorf that has been operating for a little more than two years, according to the company's Web site. Russian aerospace company Irkut announed a tie-up with the Swiss rotorcraft UAV developer in January. The deal would have seen Irkut supply sensors and ground infrastructure and the Swiss company the air vehicle. The fate of that deal is unknown.

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