Banshee target drones are operating from HMS Prince of Wales alongside F-35B jets.
Banshee is one of a number of target drones provided by Qinetiq, you can see more of their range by clicking here.
Aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales is currently at sea for her first period of concerted training with fifth-generation F-35 Lightning stealth fighters (although the first F-35 landed onboard earlier this year).
The carrier will soon participate in the largest military exercise in the UK, Joint Warrior, off the Scottish coast.
Operating crewed and un-crewed air assets in the shape of @thef35 and the Banshee from @QinetiQ is another big step forward on our journey to joint carrier strike capability.
They also look pretty cool!
✈️✈️🛩🛩😎😎@OC207Sqn @RAF_Marham pic.twitter.com/PlbnpQJFRC— HMS Prince of Wales (@HMSPWLS) September 8, 2021
Another close up of the drone shows Fleet Air Arm markings.
The Banshee Jet-80 drone was developed by Qinetiq, on their website they say:
“Developed from the successful Banshee target, this twin-jet engine powered version was developed using knowledge and experience gained whilst operating the single jet engine variant which entered service in 2010.
The current version is fitted with twin 40kg thrust gas turbine engines giving a total of 80kg of static thrust. This offers an increase in the maximum straight and level airspeed of up to 180metres/second. The use of an auxiliary fuel tank ensures that endurance is similar to that of the single engine version with a typical mixed throttle mission time in excess of 45 minutes.
When fitted with the patented Hot Nose the target provides a forward and side-looking IR source with output in Bands I, II and III, whilst the jet engines provide a realistic rearward looking IR signature. All other well proven augmentation devices traditionally available to Banshee can be fitted to this latest twin jet engine derivative.”
New Toy Day for #PWLSAtSea! We’re testing “Banshee” by @QinetiQ as a training, testing and evaluation method for simulating airborne targets at sea.
Capable of up to 200meters per second, it’s twin gas turbines mean it’s pretty quick!
✈️✈️💨💨🎯🎯 pic.twitter.com/KobVRHSUEV— HMS Prince of Wales (@HMSPWLS) September 2, 2021
A silly question to start… Is the Banshee drone recoverable or one use only?
They are recoverable, allowing the target to be used again. They have a parachute and can be recovered by a sea boat/helo.
I suspect this will help replace the Hawks in the aggressor role.
So they are plucked from the ocean, how do they prevent destruction by salt water? Particularly ingres via tail pipe?
Must be total rebuild…the engine ain’t gona
like salt water.
remove engine and dunk in fresh water barrel ,blast with air line .Then into a barrel of liquid a bit like WD40 flush through and allow to dry the electronics are conformal coated .You can start the engine the next day , Simples
And the operators are out off harm’s way and cheaper to train no more towed targets Canberras or shellducks lord I’m showing my age
And that is in the days before safety became the thing it is now.
In those days it was OK because “we know what we are doing”…..
I recall a few hair raising incidents…..where quick thinking averted…..
Exactly theirs a few Canberra crews who either went grey haired or filled their flight suits when someone didn’t get 15degrees of separation correct whoops that was close
Maybe they can parachute it onto the ship because it’s big enough area.
Perhaps they should have a word with Musk to see if they can get those nets that he intends to use for second takes or Rocket Lab and their heli captures of their rockets. This sounds like I might be a doddle by comprising.
Meanwhile I wonder if the parachute them over land.
I take it these drones don’t return with a fig leaf.
Would be interesting to know if the Banshees are using the ski jump for take-off.
No undercarriage, so Banshee is rail-launched and its inbuilt bouyancy allows recovery from the sea.
Hmm, a rail could conceivably be described as a catapult style device, so perhaps this is a contender for the RN’s recent request to industry for a drone catapult.
No, this is far too small. A banshee is 70kg fully loaded. For the cats , they’re looking for up to 55,000 pounds (25 tonnes). And for the traps they’re looking at 47,000 pounds.
Qinetiq has a design where their launch Rails run up the sides of the ski ramp.
they have been shooting drones for some time, its as they get larger the issues occur.
I wonder what the Royal Navy of 40-50 years ago would have thought about one of its capital ships communicating to the public through the use of sun glasses face and aircraft emojis. Is this cringe or a good modern way of getting the message out?
Hi Something Different,
I quite like it, makes me smile. Seeing the ships communicate directly with the public is important in this day and age and it is something the RN appears to be getting quite good at. The other thing to note is that this is building a positive image and filling a communications gap that would otherwise be taken by other less friendly players.
Cheers CR
I think that it’s a positive but it does raise expectations. While no one would expect a ship on active ops to be messaging some “silences” can be embarrassing. Case in point is when HMS Diamond’s twitter feed suddenly went quiet when she had to leave CSG21 with propulsion difficulties only to go live again a month or so later when she finally made the transit through Suez.
Hi Y Ddraig Goch, That is a very good example. Whilst I can understand the RN / MoD wanting to paint a good picture I think a bit of honesty would help people to understand just how hard are service people really do work to protect us even when they are not on high threat operations. HMS Diamond’s engineers, I am sure, would have been working hard to try and identify and posiibly fix the problem without a stop over. When a stop over became inevitable they would have been hard at it planning the port visit work and liaising… Read more »
If the armed forces want to engage with the youth……….. Us old(er) fogies must just look past it 🙂
It worked for Tom cruise with Top Gun the US careers offices saw a rise in recruiting for the US Navy after its release
What did your dad think of your fashion/music when you were young. Times change if it works it’s worth it.
This is a misleading headline. Just firing target drones have not the same quality as “drones operating from”
The ship disagrees “Operating crewed and un-crewed air assets in the shape of @thef35 and the Banshee from @QinetiQ”.
The fundamental problem is that drones can mean everything from small quadcopter drones over target drones to the massive XQ-58 Valkyrie. Journalists should call out the MoD if their PR speak is trying to imply something while it is technically not lying (too much).
Ship is correct, they don’t promote the banshee to drone status.
So they’ve got the red ones onboard for target practice and the grey one for the photo op. I suppose it will be useful for the crew to get used to handling uas from the decks but only those who get their defence info from the tabloids will believe these have any potential for offensive use.
Strap big ass bomb to it and make it a suicide drone..
endurance up to 1 hour, max speed 250 m/s so could go quite far depending on radio signals, not sure if it has to be line of sight or program the let it go… The Banshee NG New Generation Aerial Targets by QinetiQ add a bomb might make it say 30 mins endurance instead… still fair distance
We already have suicide drones they are called ship to ship missiles, cruise missiles etc that can fly supersonic and carry a nasty warhead
Yeah on our subs tomahawk, but the 3 harpoons left isn’t exactly scary.. 30 banshees maybe upgraded faster ect would put any ship out of action, maybe.
Our SAM’s would work too. Especially with a few litres of fuel to burn.
Drones have rights to… you you dronophobic.
Hi Bloke down the pub, Couldn’t agree more, however, it does give the crew and RN early access to the type kit they may be called on to handle in the future (all be it likely to have a proper undercarriage). I also wonder if they will be launching them fro the carrier during the up coming exercise – possibly to the side of the ramp? There is a markee visible to the side of the ramp behind the red Banshee in the first phote on the Twitter feed. Perhaps the fitting of some extra equipment to launch the Banshees… Read more »
Couldn’t we strap big ass bombs to these and make them swarm suicide drones.. 30 of these coming towards you some high some low, would be terrifying.
Even without bombs, the enemy would surely expend a lot of expensive missiles taking them all down.
M@
Good point, wast all their missiles and use anti ship missile.
Agreed. This is why I quite like the idea of having a Type 31 frigate in the Carrier Strike Group. I’d rather throw a few rounds from its guns than waste missiles on cheap slow drones that are potentially only there as a screening force/missile magnets. Anything high performance can be left for the T45’s Aster missiles. Just my opinion anyway. Others would probably say, why wait, hit the target as far away as possible with missiles. But at the expense of depleting our limited missile supply, I’m not so sure. I’m eager to see more about the capability of… Read more »
That surely is why most of the RN ships have 20/30/40mm cannons fitted?
I agree that it is pointless using expensive missiles where cheapo reloadables will do a fantastic job. Thing is you can afford to keep a lot of 30mm dumb rounds to hand as they don’t cost fortunes – even the decent ones….
The army were looking at things like 40mm with smart ammunition.
Interest is back to cannon now longer range smarter rounds are real.
30mm HE ,HEI, HEIT. There as good as their Aimer Haven’t the faintest where baby gunners in training do a live firing now that HMS Cambridge has gone unless they do Virtual gunnery
Realistically most of it is done by the CMS software modules?
MiM is only there as a circuit breaker if there is error.
Love a live firing it’s a senses thing got you in tune with what you were trained for SU orAA can’t beat the sound and smell and the vibrations of letting loose at the of Order ‘Alarm” aircraft and trying to down a chukka, its just stripping down and sponging out that was a bummer whilst WDP ctews minced off for 4o’clockers
I see the Dutch are looking to replace their Goalkeeper ciws with a combination of short range missiles (SeaRam) and guided ordnance for 76mm guns.
That is the same thoughts Italy has been having. They are getting rid of the twin super forties as CIWS. Instead they will be using the DART round from the OTO 76 as the CIWS.
If we have the numbers available then I also think a T31 would be handy deployed with a CSG. It would act purely as the carriers goalkeeper, using what ever it has available to stop any leakers that get past the T45s. Dare I say it, but a sacrificial lamb to protect the carrier.
Better we had 40mm/57mm/76mm on the carriers than the very short range 20mm Phalanx. I think taking up an AA position with just the very limited 30mm chain gun was very foolish. A proper AA gun of that caliber would be able to do everything it can plus AA.
Reminds me of Red Storm Rising where Soviet Naval Aviation used hundreds of obsolete drones to spoof the USN into expending all their Phoenix AAM before the real threat came from another quarter.
Tom Clancy? Must add that to my list! Hence why intelligence gathering is so important!
M@
Yes mate. Damn you’ve not read it, I say no more!
Don’t let Jack Ryan know
According to the author, when he was researching the details of the attack on the carrier fleet, he ran through a number of wargame scenarios with actual US Navy personnel. He said everyone was shocked at how effective the decoys were and how open the fleet would be without the aircraft’s long range stand-off weapons.
Red storm rising that’s so 1980s, read that when I was a kid. Had the computer game as well, now that was a great old game.
His book submarine is very good, it’s none fiction (ish) and compares a British and American boat, lot of discussion on training, culture etc it’s a not bad read, not up to the standard of understanding navel warfare etc but still good light read.
Yeah quite agree you wouldn’t see the whites of their eyes
Yes, it worked for Israel and the USA. That is basically how the Harop suicide drone came about. The original much smaller aircraft was used as a target drone. But then someone realised with a 4 hour endurance it would make a good surveillance drone as well. Then someone though lets fill the space behind the sensor with explosives so that it can also attack targets as well. Its worked pretty well in both Syria and Armenia. Meanwhile the USA have used target drone aircraft as decoys for a number of missions in the past, most notoriously Gulf War 1… Read more »
Scary that on the surface we seem to have ignored these sort of drones either defensively or offensively till now. It was all pretty predictable at least ten years back when the hobby drone business really started to take off.. quite literally. Clearly others haven’t, offensively anyway.
This continued dronophobic behaviour is worrying, get help reaper, it’s it to late.
Could someone explain what function these Banshees fulfill?
I get the use of manned ‘aggressors’ for pilot training but can a Banshee replicate that in terms of air to air combat? Clearly a Banshee, but not a Hawk, can be shot down but given the cost, apart from in special circumstances; I assume that they don’t actually shoot them down.
As to testing the carriers defences, can it replicate an incoming subsonic missile? Ignoring the reality that the incoming AShM is almost certainly going to be supersonic.
Not air to air. Check out CATS “Combined Aerial Target Service”, provided for years now to the MoD once we privatised its provision. ( As usual 😠 )
Our DERA, now Qinetiq, has used such drones for years from Aberporth and once upon a time LLanbedr.
Painting one in FAA grey livery is a nice touch but just PR spin.
Ahh I remember going from MoD to DRA to DERA to Qinetiq. It was cringy the way they announced the new name with the new signs on site being covered until the announcement. Then it was how the hell do you pronounce it 😅🤣😂
At least ranges remain MoD owned under the LTPA and the “best bits” of DERA were retained as DSTL.
I found the privatisation of DERA scandalous myself.
Always thought it pronounced like kinetic as kinetic energy.
I would like to see some developments in the area of hypersonic detection and engagement. Practicing against small drones is one thing. But if nations are perusing missiles that are getting faster and faster, that’s a threat we really need to be training for.
M@
Both Sampson and S1850M can track hypersonic targets.
Yes that’s very true. My only query here and hopefully someone might be able to illuminate on the subject, is that I have read that highly manoeuvrable hypersonic missiles take advantage of the fractional breaks in updating tracking info and predicting its movement that a rotating radar provides. Clearly Samson with two plates (potentially 3 at some stage) is designed to minimise this problem but it was never designed surely to anticipate these highly manoeuvrable hypersonic be they ballistic glide bodies or cruise. What’s the opinion on this question.
I like the quip -“illuminate” – lol. The issue is especially with older style mechanically scanned pulse doppler radars. Even though the radar pulse is travelling at the speed of light (in the atmosphere). It will still take time to reach the target and then bounce back. If a target is a very long distance away say over 400km. A radar will have to drop its pulse repetition frequency (PRF) and extend the pulse repetition intervals (PRIs). This is because you have to account for the time that the leading edge of the pulse hits and interacts (dwell time) with… Read more »
It’s amusing, or scary, take your pick, that the Russians are claiming their Hypersonic missiles are effectively impossible to defend against while in recent weeks somewhat superficially contradictory, claiming their own missile defences are more than capable of defending against any prospective US Hypersonic weapon no matter how capable or fast. Equally they are claiming, and this is apparently part of their argument apparently that US inferiority in the production of Titanium alloys means they are less able to produce highly manoeuvrable hypersonic warheads ie resisting the generated heat. I can only guess that all that effort and horrendous expense,… Read more »
There was a budget for testing things against drones…..so yes things were shot down and still are……you have to every now and again: just to be sure it all works as it should.
For a period of time this was done stateside, then subsonic came home and to keep the French happy supersonic was done with them. Which was fine when T45 was just Aster.
Now the missile mix is more complex and getting more sensitive we will need the results to stay at home.
The drones can be equipped with a deployable IR or radar reflective target. As per the Hawk and Canberra days, the target is reeled out via a cable, therefore if conducting live missile training the target is hit rather than the drone. The drone after its tasking, can then deploy a parachute and land then be recovered for further use. The Banshee 80 can fly as low as 5m and at speeds of 400mph. The 80+ at 450mph, whilst the new Banshee NG has a straight and level speed of over 550mph. They can be either programmed to fly via… Read more »
Yes that latter point crossed my mind.
It lets you know your a bit buggered and about to be shuffled off.
Could these be used to fake an attack whilst the F-35s sneak in from some other vector….
Yes, The Banshee 80 has a very low cross section. They use Luneburg lenses to enhance the drones RCS. The new Banshee NG has an even smaller RCS. The issue would be range as they generally only have an endurance of about an hour, though I’m sure that could be sorted.
Could always think of Air dropping the Banshee with a payload
When we going to see it take off..? Where will the rail be? Next to ski ramp? Hanging off the side?
When we used the old fashion prop shellducks areal targets were launched from an RFA rather than from the target vessels
beautiful
Hope that there’s no Woke Guardian readers browsing through this article they’re be quite annoyed that “BANSHEE” Irish folklore is being used another case of Cultral misappropriation by Colonialists boo whoo
Yes, Shee are “Sidhe” Faerie.
Thank bjesus they didn’t name it leprechaun
LEPRecon
It’s the way I tellum
we are all going to die……
If they are not careful cliodhna will come and claim ownership, just luckily she’s not been herself since the famine.
“cleena…..has not been heard ever since lamenting any of our race, though I believe she still weeps in the mountains of Drumaleaque…….where so many of the race of Eoghan Mor are dying of starvation”
Dank da lord , whoops trying too text an impression of beautiful brogue ,alas she hasn’t been seen or heard from since the famine .I wonder if our Banshee could be adapted for famine relief Air drops I’m really treading a fine line here ,I do hope I’m not offending anyone
Lol naa, funny is not offensive ( well sometimes but who’s perfect).
I placed the last line in my previous post just in case A Guardian reader ventured onto UKDJ can’t go round upsetting anyone from the people’s Republic of Islington whoops done it again
The guardian is a perfectly good paper for general news, but just like the telegraph it’s best to take its political and social commentary with a pinch of salt. Otherwise before you know it you end up being really boring down the pub and having a fight with someone who reads the other paper…broad sheet smack downs…..love em.
Thank you Jonathan for input concerning the said left and right angles of news consumerism ,indeed One does have too take most of their indepth correspondence no matter how thought provoking with as you said a pinch of salt .Now of to the Doctors to check on my Sodium levels
There has to be a future in rotary wing drones providing UK carrier strike (& smaller platforms) with surface search, AEW & tanker provision. Imagine a networked umbrella of drones providing AEW so that if you lose one the others can compensate by shifting position. They’d be able to stay on station longer being able to carry more fuel and not having to house the human interface in the aircraft. Someone, somewhere is going to invent this pretty soon.
Imagine it won’t be a long wait. I’d add 3D printers to the mix as well. The futures always hard to predict but it’s coming and it’ll look very different to the present.
Yes I think all the work being done with e-taxis and all the related almost endlessly varied aircraft being proposed will mean a lot of such designs directly or inspired by by it will enter the military field over the next decade. Deciding what the focus or capabilities should be and anticipating fast moving technological development will no doubt be the obvious drag on them being utilised properly I suspect. As written on this site often, using the Ajax as the prime example when a basic design enters a process of endless changes and enhancements and upgrades occur you to… Read more »
The USN has shown that it can network together a pair of E2D Hawkeyes along with F35Cs using MADL, CEC and Link 16. They used the F35s to stealthily inspect targets of interest, thereby allowing the air commander to make a go/no-go decision on attacking the target. For a CSG having a pair of E2Ds networked with the strike group is a massive force multiplier, as it provides a huge surveillance umbrella. The idea of using smallish rotary winged drones for AEW is I’m afraid a non-starter, as it depends on what type of rotary winged drone it is, but… Read more »
I noticed in the defense literature that argus is up now sale, meaning no hospital ship left in tbe fleet. Also the huskies, which surprises me, you would think they would be kept in reserve in case we need to go back into Iraq/afgan.
“180 meters a second”-Why so obtuse? Just say 413mph so everybody can understand.
I suspect because 180 meters per second sounds like it could be really fast and 413 mph is just really mahhh.