Greek navy becomes first customer for Spanish Alpha UAV

Spanish company Alpha Unmanned Systems (AUS) has won an order to supply five of its Alpha 900 helicopter unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to the Hellenic Navy.

It will be the company's first major client for its intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance platform, which first flew in 2020.

AUS's chief executive officer Eric Freeman told Janes on 18 November that the company also hopes to confirm another client soon for the coastguard authority of “a South Asian country”.

However, it is Greece, as a NATO member, that he sees as representing “an important step” for an aircraft built to the alliance's STANAG standardisation agreement.

With a four-hour endurance and a take-off weight of 25 kg, the Alpha UAV provides “a much lighter and more affordable system that can do many of the things offered by similar larger ones”, he said. “They also have the benefit of being suitable for operating from much smaller ships.”

For the Greek order, AUS is being partnered by local company Altus, which also manufactures its own UAVs.

The first delivery to Greece is set for early in the second quarter of 2022.