AUSA 2023: Teledyne FLIR unveils new Black Hornet variant

Teledyne FLIR's BH 3 nano UAS. Since 2017 company officials have delivered roughly 20,000 BH3 systems to 44 countries, including most recently 1,000 BH3 nano drones to Ukrainian forces. (Teledyne FLIR)

Teledyne FLIR unveiled the newest variant of its Black Hornet nano-unmanned aircraft system (UAS) at the Association of United States Army (AUSA) 2023 annual conference.

The Black Hornet 4 (BH4) variant builds upon the technical attributes of the previous iteration of the nano UAS – the Black Hornet 3 (BH3) – according to Dave Viens, vice-president of business development at Teledyne FLIR.

Since 2017 company officials have delivered roughly 20,000 BH3 systems to 44 countries, including most recently 1,000 BH3 nano drones to Ukrainian forces via military support agreements between Kiev, Norway, and the United Kingdom, Viens said during a 4 October interview with Janes .

The Black Hornet system also features prominently in the army's Soldier Borne Sensor (SBS) programme, for which Teledyne FLIR is the prime contractor.

“So [we] have taken all those lessons learned from all those years [of] development and trials, to include all the places we've been like Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and [Ukraine] ... to figure out what's the next step beyond Black Hornet 3, and how do we make it ‘future proof' for [technologies] like autonomy” as well as networked intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), cloud-based command-and-control (C2), and other enablers on an increasingly digital battlefield, Viens said.

While the design of the BH4 variant is firmly rooted in the BH3 lessons learned, programme officials have also integrated several platform improvements into BH4 – such as increased payload size, improved sensor resolution, increased operational altitude, and time on target, according to Nils-Andreas Haagenrud, senior director of UAS Programs for Teledyne FLIR.