Greatest-in-class army unmanned aerial system three way partnership between Skyeton Worldwide and Prevail Companions brings SME agility, cost-effectiveness and ready-now functionality to UK defence necessities
- The partnership between Skyeton and Prevail combines Ukrainian drone innovation with British experience in battlefield integration to scale up quantity manufacturing
- The three way partnership’s Raybird system solutions the Strategic Defence Evaluate’s need to make use of progressive SMEs to assist ship agile, cost-effective and ready-now functionality for UK defence wants
- New UK/Ukraine three way partnership displays Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Sir Keir Starmer’s drone collaboration ambition, with endorsement from Sir Iain Duncan Smith
- Raybird is a battle-hardened, multi-role, unmanned aerial system with over 350,000 fight hours delivering best-in-class efficiency 28-hour endurance, 25-minute deployment time and operational altitudes of as much as 10,000m
- New UK-based manufacturing of Raybird will create 160 expert jobs
At this time, Skyeton – a Ukrainian unmanned plane programs firm with 19 years of engineering pedigree, and Prevail Companions – a number one UK defence and safety firm, introduced a three way partnership to fast-track the amount manufacture, provide and help for the mixing of its best-in-class drone into UK army functions.
On the coronary heart of the three way partnership is Skyeton’s battle-proven Raybird, which has flown hundreds of hours in Ukraine with extraordinarily low attrition charges and excellent operational efficiency on account of its intensive checklist of best-in-class capabilities.
As such, Raybird is emblematic of the intersection of Ukrainian battle-proven ingenuity with the ambition to carry a brand new technology of challenger SMEs into the UK procurement course of – growing the pace whereas decreasing the price of delivering know-how that matches right this moment’s evolving risk panorama. This need was specific within the not too long ago revealed Strategic Defence Evaluate, that proposed a UK Drone Centre and was given further impetus on Monday, June 23 by Sir Keir Starmer and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s accord that will carry collectively the most effective of UK and Ukrainian capabilities to fast-track this specific know-how class.
The Rt Hon Sir Iain Duncan Smith who has first-hand perception into Skyeton’s operations stated, “This three way partnership is a vital step in growing Britain’s long-range drone manufacturing capabilities. I not too long ago visited Skyeton’s spectacular services in Ukraine and noticed first-hand its world-class engineers and battlefield-tested applied sciences and processes, making it one of many prime dual-use drone producers globally.”
He continued, “Skyeton’s JV with Prevail’s strategic, operational and intelligence capabilities will assist put Britain on the forefront of drone know-how and manufacturing, tapping into our world-class proficient pool of engineers, universities and R&D centres, creating employment and upskilling alternatives.”
The Raybird design as a NATO Class 1 UAS offers for a tool-free payload scorching swap with a number of functions, together with a gimbal-stabilised digicam with unmatched goal acquisition functionality, a excessive decision reconnaissance digicam, an artificial aperture radar for panorama picture technology in darkness or unhealthy climate and a radio frequency locator. Raybird is favoured by fight troops on account of its mission success, resilience and minimal danger for operators within the area as the complete system is very cell and fast to deploy in below 25 minutes.
The total suite of modular functions, their versatile deployment and the class-leading efficiency has made Raybird one of the vital efficient unmanned aerial programs within the Russia-Ukraine conflict; a whole lot of Raybirds have been deployed within the area, recording greater than 350,000 flight hours. Skyeton estimates that the platform has been answerable for the attrition of billions of {dollars} of enemy {hardware}, with extraordinarily low plane losses.
The three way partnership will scale the supply of Raybird with new manufacturing within the UK for each deployment in Ukraine and supply the required integration experience from Prevail Companions for UK and different western militaries in search of extremely adaptable, multi-purpose and cost-effective unmanned aerial capabilities as a part of their defence portfolio.
Justin Hedges, OBE, Chairman of Prevail Companions stated, “Prevail has been current in Ukraine since earlier than the Russian invasion and over that point, we’ve witnessed the distinctive innovation of UAS know-how. We recognized Raybird as a world-leading plane with capabilities nicely past these of different Class 1 UAS; consequently, we made the choice to hunt a three way partnership with Skyeton to construct Raybird within the UK, assist develop its integration into the UK’s and NATO’s battlefield operations and maritime safety and thereby reply a few of the challenges that the Strategic Defence Evaluate introduced.”
Pavlo Shevchuk, Worldwide CEO at Skyeton, added, “Raybird has been extremely efficient below essentially the most demanding situations on the Ukrainian battlefield. By forming an alliance with a revered British firm, bringing expertise in platform integration and programs deployment, we count on the utility of our unmanned aerial system to develop globally and exponentially.”
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