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Textron Eyes Endurance Upgrade To Vertical Takeoff Variant of Aerosonde UAS

By Marc Selinger

Wednesday, July 5th, 2017

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Textron Eyes Endurance Upgrade To Vertical Takeoff Variant of Aerosonde UAS

Aerosonde HQ, the vertical-takeoff-and-landing variant of Textron's Aerosonde unmanned aircraft. (Photo courtesy of Textron Systems)

Textron [TXT] Systems, which unveiled a kit last year that converts its Aerosonde small unmanned aircraft system into a vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) UAS, is now developing a longer-endurance version of the kit.While a standard Aerosonde can fly 16 to 17 hours with a day/night video camera payload, an Aerosonde with the existing VTOL kit is limited to eight to 10 hours due to increased drag and weight. But Textron is working on a series of design tweaks to increase the VTOL…

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