Airbus Helicopters and Garuda Technologies Inc. (Garuda) have signed a contract for the delivery of up to 18 Flexrotor Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS). Garuda will offer Flexrotor services to its customers through both dry and wet lease options for a broad spectrum of civil and parapublic missions including infrastructure (roads, railways, and oil and gas pipelines, power lines) inspection, law enforcement, search, wildfire monitoring and disaster relief.  

Garuda Technologies Inc., is a Delaware-based wholly owned subsidiary of India’s Garuda Aerospace Limited. It is now expanding its operations on the North American market. Garuda’s UAS business will support critical missions across the energy, public services, agricultural, defence, and industrial sectors.

The versatile light tactical UAS Flexrotor delivers long endurance and is able to carry a wide array of sensors.  It can operate from confined land areas and from ships without flight decks, and its expeditionary capability makes it easy to transport and to go from stowed to airborne in less than 30 minutes.

With a weight of 25 kg (55 lbs), it has been designed for ISTAR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance) missions for more than 12-14 hours in a typical operational configuration. It can integrate different types of payloads including an electro-optical system and advanced sensors to suit customers’ unique mission needs. With the ability to autonomously launch and recover from either land or sea requiring only a 3.7 by 3.7 m (12 by 12 ft) area, the Flexrotor is ideal for expeditionary missions requiring minimal footprint.