An Airbus A400M has demonstrated an airborne launch of a drone.

During a recent test, an A400M deployed a drone from its opened rear cargo ramp door whilst airborne, validating its ability to air-launch drones.

“In the future such unmanned aircraft, called Remote Carriers, can serve as force multipliers for various missions, while keeping the pilots out of harm’s way. Manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) will allow the Remote Carriers to operate in concert with manned aircraft, opening new fields of tactics to surprise, deceive, deter, saturate and strike opponents.

During the A400M flight test, an Airbus-built Do-DT25 drone, acting as a surrogate Remote Carrier, was released over a test range in Northern Germany. Shortly after the launch, the drone’s parachute opened, delivering it safely to the ground.”

Airbus say that throughout the test, the drone was connected and transmitting data to the A400M ‘mother aircraft’.

“This data transfer illustrates how Remote Carriers can be connected to a combat cloud network, providing vital information by serving the role of “eyes and ears” over the battlefield, whilst also enabling them to be tasked by the manned aircraft’s operators during their missions.”

The next flight test is planned to happen this year, you can read more here.

George Allison
George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison
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14 COMMENTS

    • Arms companies have very large marketing budgets, if you ever go to a convention all the stands will be playing videos like this. Also maximises media coverage to have a snappy short video to embed in an article.

  3. Only copying what DARPA did in 2020 from a Herc. Then last year a Herc recaptured a drone in flight and hauled it inside the cabin. Still a ways to go before this becomes something useful.

    • The concept was older than that (I mean before the Gremlins)…
      A lot of these projects come from paper idea 30 or 40y ago.

      These tests are part of the FCAS and its not something you do in 1 day despite what you seem to think.

      I love how people use “only copying” like its a bad thing…
      But its how the ideas had spread over the world for thousands of years.
      And its how China is coming from the third poor world to the first place in some decades.

      • Far from it, I know how difficult it would be to recover another smaller aircraft by a larger. Having jumped out of C130s via the troop door and the ramp. The turbulence behind the aircraft, will make any recovery difficult.

        My comment was more to do with the PR spin Airbus are displaying. As their video gives the impression that this has never been done before.

        From memory I think one of the first successful captures was when a B29 caught a Goblin mini fighter. But it took numerous attempts before a successful hook up was made and then it couldn’t be repeated. However parasitic fighters date back to WW1, where Royal Navy airships were trialed with a single Sopwith Camel carried below it. Once launched the aircraft was not recovered by the airship but landed normally on the ground.

        The DARPA method has been to date the most successful and repeatable method used for launching and recovering aircraft whilst in flight.

    • The UAV being connected with the A400M through the new Airbus’ combat cloud is the selling point here. That’s the entire point of using remote carriers.

  4. One could have some fun with that vid.

    I want dramatic shifts to Dougal, Trumpton and Paddington Bear with a Liz Truss hat added.

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