Boeing to Fly Beyond Line of Sight in Denmark
A ScanEagle UAS launch at sea. Photo: Insitu.
Signing at HCA Airport with Christian Berg and Boeing staff. Photo: UAS Test Center Denmark.
Insitu, a Boeing subsidiary, will be the first to conduct beyond-visual-line-of-sight flights with an unmanned aircraft system in Denmark under civilian authority in May this year.
The flights will take place in cooperations with the Danish Transport Authority at Hans Christian Anderson Airport on May 28 with Insitu’s ScanEagle UAS and are part of a broader agreement signed by Boeing and HCA Airport to develop UAS Test Center Denmark, which is used for training, testing and development.
“Boeing’s initial unmanned flight experiments at HCA Airport in 2011 inspired the concept behind UAS Test Center Denmark,” says HCA Airport CEO Christian Berg. “We have the airspace and the infrastructure to be a leader in testing and training throughout the international UAS community, and our work with Boeing is critical to showcasing what the future may hold for Denmark in unmanned systems.”
This work will comprise members of public and private sectors including the UAS Denmark Consortium, a group of companies, government organizations and other entities supporting UAS industry development. Boeing was the first major international aerospace and defense company to join the consortium.
According to a UAS Test Center Denmark press release, the ScanEagle, a long-endurance intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance UAS used by the U.S. Navy among other parties, will demonstrate its capabilities for a variety of industries including agriculture and aerial surveying, emergency and natural disaster response, and defense and Arctic surveillance.
A recent study commission by Boeing found that collaboration with Denmark’s defense industry could yield more than 10,000 Danish jobs and add six billion DKK to the country's gross domestic product over 20 years.
