Glide bomb successfully matched with small UAS

QUANTICO, Va., Sept. 24 (UPI) -- Small precision glide bombs have been successfully dropped from a small unmanned aircraft system at the Army's Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona.

In two live-fire demonstrations, the Fury weapons from Textron Systems Weapon & Sensor Systems and partner Thales UK engaged and destroyed their targets.

The demonstrations were the first using a Shadow 200 UAS, which is 11.2 feet long and has a wingspan of 14 feet.

"Our team is focused on quickly bringing new and affordable capability to the warfighter," said Weapon & Sensor Systems Senior Vice President and General Manager Ian Walsh. "Based on an understanding of our customers' needs, we demonstrated -- in a short period of time -- Fury's full ... capability in a realistic environment. Not only is the weapon simple to use, accurate and attractively priced, it's an ideal complement to the trusted Shadow platform as well as other UAS or light attack aircraft.

"We've also proven that the lightweight weapon and carriage system creates very little drag, resulting in minimal operational impact to aircraft performance and endurance."

The Fury glide bomb is 27 inches long, three inches in diameter and weighs 12.7 pounds. It features tri-mode fuzing -- impact, height of burst and delay -- and uses a common interface for rapid integration on multiple manned and unmanned aircraft systems.

Textron said the bomb is guided by a GPS-aided inertial navigation unit system and has a semi-active laser seeker terminal guidance capability.