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Kaman Announces First Flight of Unmanned K-MAX TITAN™
2021-05-13

Kaman Air Vehicles, a division of Kaman Aerospace Corporation, announced today the first flight of its new unmanned helicopter, the K-MAX TITAN™. The world’s first heavy lift unmanned helicopter for the commercial market, K-MAX TITAN™ leads the way in repetitive, heavy lift without the constraints of manned operations. With a focus on enabling safety and operational efficiency, the proprietary K-MAX TITAN™ system will redefine the helicopter external lift market by increasing future mission capabilities in any location and any type of weather.
“We are excited to reach this major milestone on K-MAX TITAN™ – watching this capability take to the skies and knowing that we are going to solve some of the toughest challenges for our commercial and military customers,” stated Roger Wassmuth, Senior Director, Business Development, Air Vehicles Division.
Concurrent with commercial development, Kaman is working with the U.S. Marine Corps on upgrading the autonomous capabilities of their two USMC K-MAX® air vehicles through a funded government contract. Flight-testing is expected to start in May 2021. The USMC experiment includes Kaman’s K-MAX TITAN™ unmanned system and Near-Earth Autonomy’s sensor-based autonomy suite.
“Kaman leads the way with innovative solutions for our customers that are reliable, affordable and sustainable. K-MAX TITAN™ is no exception, whether the mission calls for firefighting, humanitarian assistance, or distributed logistics,” stated Darlene Smith, President, Air Vehicles and Precision Products Divisions.
The new K-MAX TITAN™ system will be available for existing K-MAX® aircrafts as well as on new production K-MAX® helicopters. The K-MAX® is a rugged, low-maintenance aircraft that features a counter-rotating rotor system and is optimized for repetitive external load operations. The aircraft can lift up to 6,000 pounds (2,722 kg) with unmatched performance in hot and high conditions.
Source: https://www.kaman.com/aerosystems/solutions/air-vehicles-mro/unmanned-aerial-systems
The Biryuch Innovation Center conducted successful flight tests of the prototype of a new model of unmanned aerial vehicle - a cargo drone. The drone is supposed to be used in emergency situations to deliver cargoes and evacuate victims.
In the nearest future an experiment on implementation of unmanned aircraft systems will start in five regions of Russia. Resolutions to this effect were signed by the Chairman of the Government Mikhail Mishustin.
RN-Purneftegaz, which is part of Rosneft's oil and gas production complex, is increasing overflights of production facilities and pipelines using Russian-made unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in 2022. The number of aerial monitoring routes increased from 8 to 17, monthly kilometers increased to 6,700 km.
The Almaz-Antey Concern has successfully completed state acceptance tests of the ROSC-1 radar-optical complex for ensuring security of critical facilities at Kurumoch International Airport in Samara.
FlyingBasket and Bayerische Staatsforsten (BaySF) joined forces to test the use of cargo drones for tree planting in the mountains. After FlyingBasket obtained crossborder operation authorisation by the Federal Aviation Office in Germany, the team was able to start the trial by transporting 2,000 young trees from a location in the valley of Aschau, Southern Bavaria, to 18 planting locations up in the mountains near the famous Kampenwand.
Unmanned aviation follows the path of manned. At the beginning of the XX century, first, there were reconnaissance airplanes, then they learned to drop bombs from them. We fought the first planes initially from the ground with machine-gun and artillery fire, it turned out to be expensive and inefficient. Until specialized fighter planes appeared. History repeats itself with unmanned aircraft. Shooting down drones with missiles or cannons is also expensive and also inefficient. It was clear that soon the reconnaissance and strike drones would be hunted by unmanned fighters. The first such device was presented by the Russian company ZALA DEFENSE.
Updating mobile networks is quite a difficult job, which is usually performed by engineers. But Vodafone decided to introduce an innovation in England and, together with Ericsson, try to replace people with drones in this business.
The Chinese company Xiaopeng Motors, specializing in the production of electric vehicles, presented a manned drone Traveler X1 at the Shanghai Auto Show Auto Shanghai 2021. Traveler X1 is capable of reaching speeds of up to 120 km/h. The size of the new vehicle is comparable to the size of a compact city car.
The State Duma adopted in the first reading a government bill providing for the introduction of accounting identification marks, which will be required to be applied to unmanned civil aircraft.
Starting next year, the unmanned aircraft will begin parachuting mail and medical supplies weighing up to 200 kilograms in such remote regions as Kamchatka and the Komi Republic.
Reports

The drone market has grown steadily and continuously over the past several years. The technology is here to stay and is becoming more prevalent across numerous industries. But 2020 was a unique year due to Covid-19. Overall, respondents even felt that the changes in business models triggered by the lockdowns would actually have a positive impact on the drone industry in the long run.