NV-3 · VTOL Tactical UAS · Flight testing
Vesper
Vertical launch from any deck, any clearing, any road.
A vertical take-off and landing aircraft that gives ships, forward units and border posts an organic surveillance and resupply capability with no runway.
Specifications
- Class
- Group 3 UAS
- Propulsion
- Heavy-fuel hybrid
- Endurance
- 14 hours
- Cruise speed
- 150 km/h
- Payload
- 25 kg cargo or sensor
- Launch and recovery
- Vertical, ship-capable
Figures are design targets and subject to configuration.
Overview
Vesper combines vertical lift with efficient fixed-wing cruise. It lifts off from a ship's deck or a cleared patch of ground, transitions to forward flight and covers a tactical area for most of a day before returning to the same spot.
Vesper is a workhorse. Its payload bay accepts a sensor turret, a communications relay or up to 25 kilograms of cargo, so the same aircraft that scouts a route in the morning can resupply the unit that walks it in the afternoon.
Vesper is fully compatible with the Noctis ground control station and can be handed between operators mid-flight, so a ship can launch an aircraft that a shore unit later controls.
Capabilities
What Vesper does
01
Ship-deployable
Vesper launches and recovers automatically from small-deck vessels in sea state four, with no deck handling equipment.
02
Multi-role bay
Sensors, relays and cargo share a common bay interface and are swapped in minutes.
03
Operator hand-off
Control passes between ground stations without interrupting the mission, so aircraft follow the fight rather than the operator.
04
Heavy-fuel powertrain
Runs on the same fuel as the vehicles and vessels it deploys with, simplifying logistics in the field.