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Thales successfully demonstrates automatic take-off and landing on the Elbit Hermes ® 450 using Thales’s MAGIC ATOLS system

Written by thomas · Filed Under Aeronautics News 

September 1, 2008

thomas

Neuilly sur Seine, 26 August 2008 – Thales and Elbit Systems today announce that an important
trial of the Thales MAGIC ATOLS (automatic take-off and landing) system has successfully been
achieved on Elbit’s Hermes ® 450 Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV), demonstrating and validating
automatic take-off and landing.
A number of successful qualification flights were carried out in Israel during May, including
automatic take-offs, landings and touch-and-go with Thales’s MAGIC ATOLS system on board.
The MAGIC ATOLS system was integrated into the Hermes 450 as a fully redundant system in
addition to the GPS based take-off and landing capability, allowing it to perform the take-off and
landing task without an external pilot dedicated to this phase.
The demonstration has provided Thales with extremely promising results for the future usage of
this functionality for UAVs. In addition, the reduced logistic footprint will permit a quick and easy
deployment compatible with land force operations.
Thales’s MAGIC ATOLS is an automatic, compact system ensuring maximum safety, in all weather
conditions, during the critical take-off and landing phases of fixed wing UAV operations. The
MAGIC ATOLS system has a non-intrusive standalone architecture and together with the UAV’s
GPS based take-off and landing capability ensures a quick and simple integration into the UAV
system.
The high-precision and long-range positioning sensor performance paves the way for future
applications on MALE (Medium Altitude Long Endurance) as well as tactical rotary wing UAVs. The
current MAGIC ATOLS sub-system and its growth capabilities have been fully developed by
Thales in France with the involvement of several innovative SMEs (Small and Medium
Enterprises).
Hermes® 450 UAVs are operated extensively in military and homeland security operations
worldwide providing an outstanding ISTAR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and
Reconnaissance) capability. It is recognised as the leading long-endurance tactical UAV. To date
the Hermes ® 450 has accumulated more than 100,000 flight hours, thereby demonstrating its high
reliability, robustness, maturity and reduced logistic footprint. Consequently the Hermes ® 450 is
perfectly adapted to cover deployment for urgent operations.

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