Airborne Drone Carrier Launches Another Drone

Flying Launch and Recovery System or FLARES – photo Insitu

November 6, 2015 Robert Beckhusen – War is Boring

Say goodbye to the ScanEagle's 4,000-pound ground catapult

Here’s one way to find a new use for an old drone — stick it underneath another drone which serves as a flying mothership. Insitu, a Boeing-owned company which manufactures the tiny ScanEagle surveillance drone, recently showed off a video of a quadcopter carrying the ScanEagle into the air and launching it … like a flying aircraft carrier. The ScanEagle then heads back to its quadcopter and snags a retrieval line. The whole system, known as the Flying Launch and Recovery System or FLARES, is a drone-carrier drone.

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