The British Army has revealed that it has been testing a new Lockheed Martin’s unmanned aircraft system called the Indago.
“An Indago Remote Piloted Aerial System (RPAS) is tested at the Army Warfighting Experiment (AWE) [the annual British Army innovative experimentation program],” the British Army said in a Twitter post.
The Indago is a new vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) small unmanned aerial system (UAS) developed by the Pentagon’s No.1 weapons supplier Lockheed Martin Corp.
As noted by the company, ruggedized, backpackable, and rapidly deployable, the Indago system weighs less than 10 lbs., fits within a small backpack, and deploys in approximately 2 minutes.
Its payloads provide high resolution, daytime, electro-optical imagery capable of reading a license plate from a 1000-foot standoff distance. For nighttime, it provides detailed thermal infrared that can identify a person, weapon, and other intelligence, such as warmth of vehicle tracks on the surface. This includes imagery in black hot, white hot, and ironbow, an orange and purple heatmap color scheme.
This summer, Lockheed Martin also has announced that the Swiss Army chooses Indago 3 small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) for tactical reconnaissance and surveillance.
