The BAE Systems SkyEye is a

reconnaissance In military operations, military reconnaissance () or scouting is the exploration of an area by military forces to obtain information about enemy forces, the terrain, and civil activities in the area of operations. In military jargon, reconnai ...

UAV An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or unmanned aircraft system (UAS), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft with no human pilot, crew, or passengers onboard, but rather is controlled remotely or is autonomous.De Gruyter Handbook of Drone ...

developed in the United States in the early 1970s by Developmental Sciences Inc, later called Developmental Sciences Corporation, a division of Lear Astronics Corporation and ultimately part of

BAE Systems BAE Systems plc is a British Multinational corporation, multinational Aerospace industry, aerospace, military technology, military and information security company, based in London. It is the largest manufacturer in Britain as of 2017. It is ...

. Developmental Sciences Inc was one of the first US companies to investigate battlefield UAVs, flying the first prototype of the SkyEye series in 1973, leading to the first flight of the improved R4E variant in 1981. The R4E has been continuously refined since then in a sequence of subvariants. The R4E SkyEye is in service with a number of countries, including Egypt and Morocco, for battlefield surveillance, and has also been used commercially for pesticide spraying. Apparently a few stock R4Es were also purchased by the US Army's South Command in Latin America and used for border patrols. The

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...

had also considered a variant of it, the McDonnell Douglas Sky Owl, for the short-range UAV competition. As the Sky Owl,

McDonnell Douglas McDonnell Douglas Corporation was a major American Aerospace manufacturer, aerospace manufacturing corporation and defense contractor, formed by the merger of McDonnell Aircraft and the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1967. Between then and its own ...

leveraged it into the company's proposal for the Army competition, but apparently it proved generally inferior to the

RQ-5 Hunter The IAI RQ-5 Hunter is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) originally intended to serve as the United States Army's Short Range UAV system for division and corps commanders. It took off and landed (using arresting gear) on runways. It used a gimba ...

. The SkyEye has the common pusher-propeller twin-tailboom configuration, but it has distinctive slightly swept wings and antennas on top of the tailplanes. It is powered by a UAV Engines Limited (UEL) 39 kW (52 hp) rotary engine. The SkyEye can carry two underwing stores along with its other payload. It lands on a retractable centerline skid or can be recovered by parachute. The R4E-30 variant is designated B.W.1 () by the

Royal Thai Armed Forces The Royal Thai Armed Forces (RTARF; ; ) are the armed forces of the Kingdom of Thailand. The Highest Commander of the Royal Thai Armed Forces (จอมทัพไทย; ) is the King of Thailand. The armed forces are managed by the Minist ...

Specifications (R4E SkyEye)

References

This article contains material that originally came from the web article by Greg Goebel, which exists in the Public Domain.

External links

R4E SkyEye on manufacturer's website
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UAV designations , designation=B.W.1 1970s United States military reconnaissance aircraft Unmanned aerial vehicles of the United States British Aerospace aircraft Single-engined pusher aircraft Twin-boom aircraft