Schiebel Doubling Production Capacity of Camcopter S-100 Drone

Austrian drone maker Schiebel is doubling the manufacturing capacity of its Camcopter S-100 vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) drone due to high demand from customers.

It has commenced construction of a new facility in Wiener Neustadt, a city located just south of capital Vienna, to handle the increased production, the company announced on its Twitter account on Wednesday.

The 23,000 sqm2 facility (production plant: 2,300m2) currently produces 120 units of S-100s per year.

This has come at a time when the aerospace and defense industry is going through a severe downturn due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the past few months, Schiebel has won orders from Royal Thai Navy and the United Arab Emirates armed forces. Other customers for the S-100 include Australia, Malaysia, France, Croatia and Norway among others.

The S-100 is capable of carrying 34kg of payload for more than 6 hours. It can take a maximum payload of 50kg. It navigates automatically via pre-programmed GPS waypoints or can be operated directly with a pilot control unit.

Missions are planned and controlled via a simple point-and-click graphical user interface. High-definition payload imagery is transmitted to the control station in real time. Using “fly-by-wire” technology controlled by redundant flight computers, the UAV can complete its mission automatically in the most complex of electromagnetic environments. Its carbon fiber and titanium fuselage provides capacity for a wide range of payload / endurance combinations.