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After more than four years of experimentation and evaluation, the U.S. Army is
beginning to send out FLIR Systems' tiny Black Hornet nano drones to operational
units, which will fundamentally change how the service conducts itself on the
battlefield. The miniature unmanned helicopter will give the elements as small
as infantry squads a significant boost in situational awareness and allow them
to scout ahead without having to automatically put soldiers at risk.
On Jan. 9, 2019, the Army revealed that the Soldier Sensors and Lasers (SSL)
division of Rock Island Arsenal’s Joint Manufacturing and Technology Center
(RIA-JMTC) had delivered the first 60 complete Black Hornet systems to
unspecified units. Then, on Jan. 24, 2019, FLIR Systems announced it had
received a contract worth up to $39.6 million to deliver thousands more of the
drones to the service, along with associated equipment, in the coming years.
“The equipment is getting smaller and the reason it’s getting smaller is so the
Soldier can be equipped with this,” Sunny Koshal, the chief of the Soldier
Support Branch at RIA-JMTC said in an official interview in January 2019. “This
thing, you can really pocket it and just carry it.”
The latest Black Hornet 3, which FLIR Systems also calls the Personal
Reconnaissance System (PRS), weighs less than a tenth of a pound and is just
under seven inches long. The complete system comes with a docking station for
two drones that keeps them protected when not in use, as well as a hand-held
touchscreen device and a controller.
All of this, along with a number of other more minor parts, as well as the
user’s manual, comes inside a foam-lined, ruggedized container. But the basic
components necessary to use the Black Hornet in the field could easily fit
inside a soldier’s backpack.
For its compact size and weight, the system, which the Army officially calls the
Soldier Borne Sensor (SBS), offers impressive capabilities. Each Black Hornet
has two daytime video cameras, as well as a thermal imager. All of these systems
can capture still images for further analysis, too.
During nighttime operations, the drone fuses the feeds from both its
electro-optical the thermal imaging system to create higher fidelity imagery.
This makes it easier for the operator to positively identify individuals as
hostile, rather than just innocent bystanders, or otherwise examine other
objects of interest in the dark.
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