Royal Navy Wildcat taps live drone feeds in flight to target moving vehicle in UK first

A Royal Navy Wildcat helicopter has, for the first time, used live feeds from multiple drones to help target a moving vehicle during UK trials.

From the Wildcat's cabin, the aviators operated the Navy's Puma drone while also receiving a video feed from the smaller Providence system, to locate and share targets and build a picture of the local area.

According to the Royal Navy, the aim is to allow Wildcats to "sneak up on threats undetected" before firing their Martlet missiles.

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The crew of a Wildcat from 815 Naval Air Squadron received information almost instantaneously from two small surveillance drones, a Puma and a Providence, and from other ground-based sensors through a multi-node Mesh network.

"We turned a Wildcat helicopter into a flying command centre," said Lieutenant Commander Rhydian Edwards, Officer in Command of the Wildcat Maritime Force Operational Advantage Group, based at RNAS Yeovilton in Somerset.

A decentralised Mesh network links lots of separate nodes (radios, drones and sensors), letting data hop between them to reach the aircraft and automatically reroute if one link is jammed, knocked out or fails. 

This makes the process 'self-healing' and therefore more reliable. 

"The important thing here is that remote data nodes were used to send and receive information from any system on the Mesh network, getting that into the aircraft instantly whilst also setting the foundations for taking control of those systems when tactically appropriate – the Puma, combined with the Providence, were just a means to an end to prove that the system will work and develop initial tactics," Lt Cdr Edwards said. 

"We are building a system that is modular and survivable – embracing the latest tech to make us deadlier and harder to defeat in a fight on the modern battlefield," he added.

The trial, dubbed Eagles Eye, brought together personnel from the Navy's specialist drone squadron 700X Naval Air Squadron and Wildcat personnel from 847 Naval Air Squadron, alongside industry experts from MarWorks, TeleplanForsberg, General Dynamics, C3IA, UAV Aerosystems and Collins Aerospace, using technology the Navy says has been "combat-proven" in Ukraine.

Next, the Wildcats are off to Norway to train alongside the Royal Norwegian Navy in the fjords around Bergen. 

The Navy says the Eagles Eye lessons will be used in the deployment, where crews will practise new ways of teaming the helicopter with drones. 

The focus will be on tracking and responding to fast attack craft such as small, high-speed boats.