The Rapier X-25 is one of the most efficient, sophisticated, and safest remotely piloted aircraft systems on the market in its weight category. Developed by Italian unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) specialist Sky Eye Systems, the tactical drone weighs up to 25 kilograms and is designed for applications covering intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, pollution control and natural disaster monitoring.
Despite being so light weight, the Rapier X-25 can perform missions similar to higher class unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), thanks to its 16-hour flight endurance and sophisticated onboard sensor payload capabilities. It is also one of the first in the mini class to achieve Military Type Certification, demonstrating that it complies with strict airworthiness and military operational requirements recognized by the Italian Directorate of Air Armaments and Airworthiness.
This is a big competitive differentiator for Sky Eye Systems, made possible by its ability to bring full visibility to every aspect of the product development lifecycle, which it manages on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform on the cloud.
For Sky Eye Systems being on cloud brings huge benefits to the business. Before, its teams worked on local servers and used shared folders, facing the risk of using obsolete information and overwriting critical data. Now, everyone works within a single, online environment, taking advantage of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform’s strong collaboration capabilities and inbuilt methodologies and best practices – key for helping a young company comply with established aviation industry standards.
“I’d certainly recommend the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to a startup,” said Giovanni Fumia, head of marketing and sales at Sky Eye Systems. “It’s really easy to implement and will scale with our needs as we grow.”
Now that the Rapier X-25 is fully developed and certified, Sky Eye Systems is adding new lightweight UAVs to its Rapier portfolio, including the Rapier SkySAR for all-weather surveillance and mapping, and the hybrid energy Rapier X-VTOL. Backed by the power of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform on the cloud, the company expects to accelerate the design and testing stages for each of its UAVs, and comfortably meet key milestones and completion dates.
Read the full story to discover exactly how the UAS developer is using the 3DEXPERIENCE Cloud platform to bring its Rapier aircraft to market, ease compliance with stringent industry certifications, gain full traceability across the product lifecycle and develop new variants efficiently.
Rebecca Lambert is a skilled content creator and journalist based in the UK. Since she was a young girl, Rebecca has been captivating readers with her words, covering virtually any and every subject matter.