16//The fleet · OPERATIONAL

NIGHTJAR

Buildable today — ~£610 bill of materials, 40-minute hover, flying the CUSTOS autonomy stack on commercial hardware.

AIRFRAME SPEC
CLASS7-INCH SURVEY QUADCOPTER
STATUSOPERATIONAL
MISSIONWILDFIRE EARLY WARNING
WHEELBASE295 mm
HOVER40 min
RANGE20 km
AUW1.26 kg
THE MISSION · CIV-01

WILDFIRE EARLY WARNING

Dawn and dusk patrol lines over high-risk forestry, reading the ground in thermal. A smouldering ignition is geolocated and reported minutes after it starts, while it is still one crew rather than a thousand hectares. 2025 gave the UK its largest recorded wildfire. 2026 gave Scotland a national action plan.

PAYLOAD
EO/IR thermal core and ASTRUM SPAD array, with a calibration pipeline tuned for low-light edge inference across the dawn and dusk ignition window
PROFILE
Autonomous patrol lines · dawn/dusk cycles
OUTCOME
Target: under 90 s from ignition to alert on patrol
REGIONS
Scotland · Iberia · Gulf
FROM THE FIELD LOG
LOG-016Wildfire patrol: ignition to alert in under 40 secondsLOG-014Coasting a 20-second GNSS blackoutLOG-009Landing on altitude, not velocity
Back to the fleetSee it on the Scotland boardSPEC SHEET · PDF