UAV flies off Uk warship for the first time

The uk has started trials of Boeing's Scan Eagle UAV from the flightdeck of a Uk warship for the first time. The system was launched via pneumatic catapault off HMS Sutherland. The trials are to test the usefulness of the system in bad conditions i.e. the north atlantic.

www.navynews.co.uk...

go britain

Does anyone know if this is the first ever launch of a uav off a ship?

justin

no the US were doing it during GW1 was back in 1991

I think the Firebee might have also been launched from a ship before, though I'm not too sure about that.

yeah, UAV's have been flying off ships for awhile now. I like the Scaneagle...its doesn't have a crazy price tag like the global hawk, and it has an impressive edurance of 30 hours. It was first launched of off a US ship back in July 05'. and has also been racking up a lot of hours in Iraq as well.

The Navy had DASH ( Drone Anti Submarine Helicopter) in the 1970's, and a book I recently checked out from the library mentions quite a few, some in the 1950's.
Firebee was launched several times. The first launch failed because the jet engine was started at launch (human error)

The original claim is also wrong. This was the first UK ship launched UAV, it was used by the Royal Navy during WW2!