AeroVironment Introduces Pocket Sized, HD Cam Surveillance Drones

Drone manufacturing firm AeroVironment has introduced a four-rotor surveillance drone that is small enough to be carried by soldiers, squads in their pouch.

The relay of high-resolution images and able to record video both day and night is another aspect of this drone that can be launched from hand-palm and can be carried in pouch.

Further, the aircraft, which is intended for intelligence and reconnaissance missions, can fly at speeds of 20 mph (35 kph), Reuters reported Tuesday.

Moreover, it has a range of more than a kilometer (half-mile), and can fly for about 15 minutes on batteries.

The size is so small that it can be used by soldiers, offering squads and other small military units the kind of surveillance capacity, unlike previous days when the operating task of drones were given to specialists due to their larger sizes.

AeroVironment delivered 20 of the 5-ounce (140-gram) Snipe unmanned aircraft to its first US government client in April.

The drone has gained advantages from advances in technology achieved in the development of its Nano Hummingbird drone for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which has been responsible for many technological and scientific breakthroughs used by the military.

Kirk Flittie, AeroVironment's vice president in charge of unmanned aircraft systems said, the Snipe copter drone is "designed to be worn by its operator so it can be deployed in less than a minute."

AeroVironment's hand-launched Raven unmanned aircraft, which weighs 4.2 pounds (2 kg) and has a wingspan of 4.5 feet (1.4 meters), is one of the widely used military surveillance drones, with more than 19,000 built.