Puma UAVs Make Big Impact on Royal Navy OPV

June 10, 2021

HMS Tamar made extensive use of small Puma aircraft during trials with the Royal Marines and the Met Police as the ship practices for ‘constabulary duties’ when she deploys for the first time this summer.

Although Tamar has a flight deck, she doesn’t carry a helicopter on a regular basis – there’s no hangar, so Merlin and Wildcat helicopters only use the ship for refuelling, collecting supplies or making a short stop.

The Puma could fulfil some of the helicopter’s intelligence-gathering role – with its 50-times zoom camera it feeds live footage back to a mother ship at ranges up to a dozen miles.

Building on their experiences aboard HMS Albion in the Mediterranean last year, a team from 700X Naval Air Squadron – the Fleet Air Arm’s only pilotless squadron – brought their drone to Tamar.

Just over 4½ft long, with a wingspan of 9ft and weighing as much as six bags of sugar, Puma can survey an area of up to 270 square miles of ocean – that’s larger than Greater Manchester – looking for suspicious activity during sorties lasting up to 2½ hours.