60 of the tank; somewhat like making a very high-quality dress. That fabric is a proprietary recipe, which gives very good resistance against many kinds of fuels and external atmospheric agents. “The tank is then vulcanised in an autoclave, creating links throughout the structure of the rubber and making the whole thing behave more elastically. Afterwards, we apply water to extract the core via the tank openings; then we clean and inspect it for any defects before clearing the unit for shipping.” Meanwhile, one of M.E.Rin’s newest product offerings is a self-sealing fuel tank, intended for military applications where weapon fire may be a present hazard. The walls of these tanks are constructed from two layers of rubber sandwiching a proprietary material layer, which reacts chemically to fuel exposure by expanding, and hence clamping shut any holes that would otherwise be left (depending on the calibre of the firearm). “The self-sealing tanks are manufactured in much the same way as the bladder tanks, including the use of the same sorts of rubber, but with more layers of them and, of course, with the special expanding material as a core layer,” Maresca said. “We tested them on shooting ranges in Italy and Germany, and the idea is that they will minimise fuel losses when shot and enable the aircraft to keep flying safely.” B&S Technology, a specialist manufacturer of aluminium solutions based in northern Germany, attended Eurosatory to display its Hitbird range of attritable UAVs for the defence market. The product range is made up of three flying, wing-shaped vessels, constructed almost entirely from aluminium. “Our company owners are keen aviators and sought to design a costeffective UAV that could be produced entirely using the machinery in our factory,” said Jens Sager. “For example, manufacturing one unit of our HB [Hitbird] 700 aircraft takes just 12 hours, from cutting the first pieces of aluminium to assembling the completed UAV, and it comes with that short production time that the per unit cost is also quite low. “We’re also fairly flexible and scalable. As a company of 50-60 people with one chief engineer, if a customer asks for something bespoke in a UAV, like a different payload, powertrain or airframe configuration, we just do it.” The HB 700 is a 190 kg MTOW UAV, powered by a 60 bhp, two-stroke engine, capable of seven hours of flight endurance (and 1000 km of flight distance) when carrying 100 kg of payload and 30 kg of fuel. Its airframe features retractable landing gear, housed within a 700 m wingspan body (250 cm length). The two smaller UAVs in the Hitbird range are the HB 350 and HB 175, similarly named for their wingspans, and powered by 20 bhp and 5 bhp engines, respectively. Either can be launched by catapult, although the former can be designed with landing gear if requested. Inertial Labs told us about two new sources of aiding data that it has integrated into its ecosystem of solutions for GNSS-denied navigation. “The latest version of our ecosystem will include the ability to utilise multiple October/November 2024 | Uncrewed Systems Technology B&S Technology’s HB 700 UAV Inertial Labs’ Visual Inertial Navigation System (VINS) sensor-fusion platform
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