Tethered Drone Debuts At Paris Airshow

Today sees the opening of the Paris Air Show, the biennial trade fair and air show where the world’s aviation companies gather to display their latest innovations.

At the show for the first time this year is Atlas, the drone startup founded by Ivan Tolchinsky which is providing large numbers of small drones to Ukrainian forces. Unlike the consumer quadcopters widely used for scouting, artillery direction and bombing, these have military-grade communications and which cannot be so easily jammed. Russian jamming brings down thousands of consumer drones each month. And while Atlas are touting their jam-resistant drones, they also have a new innovation to show off at Paris: a tether system giving unlimited flight time.

Known as AtlasTETHER, this connects the drone directly to a ground controller which provides the 220Vac power to 400Vdc conversion required for the drone and allows it to hover indefinitely. The device can take power from a power socket, generator or vehicle charger.

The tether also supplies two-way communication with the drone, so there is no need for a radio link. As well as making the drone immune to radio jamming, this means there is no radio emission by either the drone or the ground controller so they cannot be detected by electronic warfare systems and located for targeting.

If the tether power and communications are lost, the drone can land automatically on battery power.

Atlas have produced the system in partnership with French company Elistair, which styles itself ‘the tethered drone company’ and whoh have already demonstrated 50-hour continuous flights with their Orion 2 small electric drones. AtlasTETHER applies the same technology to the AtlasPRO drone with its battlefield sensors.

Tethered drones have been around for more than half a century but have enjoyed little success. The (West) German military actually operated the tethered Dornier Kiebitz observation drone from 1972 onwards. This was intended to carry airborne radar, radio detection and other equipment to an operating altitude of 985 feet. However, the drone did not cope well with strong winds and was considered to be of limited utility. The program was canceled in 1981.

Tethered drones have remained a small segment of the market, as they do not provide the freedom of operation which most drone operators require. The main exception has been aerostats, tethered lighter-than-air craft extensively operated by the U.S. Army to give a permanent eye in the sky above operating bases. One version, known as the 74K Aersostat, was deployed extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan. In this case the tether only needs to provide power for the onboard sensors plus high-bandwidth communication, as the lift is supplied by buoyancy.

However, the conflict in Ukraine made have evolved a new use case for which tethered drones are ideally suited.

Drone-guided firing has been transformational, dramatically increasing the precision of Ukraine’s artillery. But it takes a lot of work to keep it going. Video of Ukrainian drone crews supporting artillery fire show that their work includes of a steady stream of picking up returning drones, changing the batteries and sending them out again. Each drone only stays in the air for about twenty minutes before it needs to return for a battery change. Ukrainian crews often complain that they do not have the equivalent of Russia’s Orlan-10, which, though flawed in some ways, can circle the battlefield for twelve hours of more directing artillery fire.

But large fixed-wing drones like the Orlan-10 are expensive at somewhere over $100k a plane. Tethering an electric drone is a cheap way of giving an artillery spotter a way to locate targets and direct artillery fire for hours on end. In addition, the tether provides greater bandwidth than is available over radio control channels. The tethered system gives the operator a detailed view in real time, compensating for the limitation of a fixed viewpoint.

Tethered drones are likely to be added to the list of different types in use in Ukraine. And the Paris Air Show is also likely to yield a host of other innovations inspired by a conflict which has been a development hothouse for new drone technology.