The ScanEagle, a military aircraft that has been used for a decade, wasn't exactly built for taking off and landing on its own. A new system, however, has been built to launch and recapture the aircraft.
The system uses a quadcopter built by Insitu to carry the aircraft into the sky and then release it, after which it will take off itself. When the ScanEagle is finished with its mission, the quadcopter will catch it midflight and return it to the ground.
The system is called Flares, which stands for "Flying Launch and Recovery System," and it basically replaces a system in which the ScanEagle launches from a metal rail and lands by flying into a massive hook that can hook it out of the sky. The new drone is an adaptation of a drone for fishermen, and it replaces the metal rail and the hook with one system that can launch the Eagle and also catch it in flight.
The new system fixes one of the aviation industry's biggest problems—the fact that a body built for vertical take-off and landing, like a drone, isn't the best for traveling long distances, and a body built to fly efficiently over long distances isn't best for taking off and landing without the use of a runway. To solve this, two drones are used, one to take off vertically and the other to travel over distances.
You can see the new system in action below.
Via: PopSci
