BAE Systems Taranis

The Taranis is a British stealth unmanned combat aerial vehicle built as a technology demonstrator by BAE Systems, with Rolls-Royce, GE Aviation Systems, Smiths Aerospace and QinetiQ as partners, and named after the Celtic god of thunder. It is about the size of a Hawk jet trainer, weighs roughly 8,000 kg at maximum takeoff and has two internal weapons bays, though it carried no weapons in its demonstrator role. It was designed to test stealth shaping, systems integration and fully autonomous operation, with a human operator authorising any engagement. Its existence was announced in December 2006, assembly of the prototype began in February 2008, it was unveiled at Warton on 12 July 2010 and it first flew on 10 August 2013 at the Woomera range in South Australia. A third and final set of flight tests ended in December 2015 with all test objectives met. Its lessons were meant to feed a joint European combat air system with the Dassault nEUROn.