The

Alenia Aeronautica Alenia Aeronautica was an Italian aerospace company. Its subsidiaries included Alenia Aermacchi and Alenia Aeronavali. Alenia Aeronautica was also the part-owner of ATR, a joint venture with European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS). ...

Sky-X is a self-financed unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for demonstration and research purpose; on May 29, 2005, it became the first European-designed

UAV An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without any human pilot, crew, or passengers on board. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), which includes adding a ground-based controller ...

in the over 1000 kg category to fly with success.

Design and development

The roll-out of the Sky-X was carried out by Alenia in May 2003 and, after 18 months of development, it first flew at the

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

test area of

Vidsel Vidsel () is a locality situated in Älvsbyn Municipality, Norrbotten County, Sweden with 533 inhabitants in 2010. It is situated about 900 km north of Stockholm, Sweden, in the Arctic Circle. History Perhaps its earliest history is as a ...

. After a first test campaign conducted with ground control in order to explore the whole flight envelope the development has focused on the autonomous flight systems, in particular the ATOL system (Assisted take off and landing), the

collision avoidance In transportation, collision avoidance is the maintenance of systems and practices designed to prevent vehicles (such as aircraft, motor vehicles, ships, cranes and trains) from colliding with each other. Examples include: * Airborne collision avo ...

, the precision autonomous navigation, the sight autonomous landing and attack and the autonomous formation fly capabilities. In 2008 the Sky-X demonstrated the capability of carrying out the join-up maneuvers necessary for in-fly refueling with an

Alenia C-27J The Alenia C-27J Spartan is a military transport aircraft developed and manufactured by Leonardo's Aircraft Division (formerly Alenia Aermacchi until 2016). It is an advanced derivative of Alenia Aeronautica's earlier G.222 (C-27A Spartan in ...

. Thanks to the technologies developed for the Sky-X in 2005 Alenia Aeronautica has joined the nEUROn European program with a consistent development share.Alenia Aereonautica official Neuron data sheet
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Specifications (Sky-X)

References

External links

Alenia Aeronautica official webpage
{{Alenia aircraft 2000s Italian experimental aircraft Sky-X V-tail aircraft Unmanned military aircraft of Italy Aircraft first flown in 2005