RAeS Lecture: A Brief History of Short Brothers Uncrewed Aerial Systems

Video from the channel Royal Aeronautical Society about Short Brothers, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 1:13:33. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

A lecture from the Royal Aeronautical Society's Weapons Systems and Technology group on the history of Short Brothers' uncrewed aerial systems in Belfast. It is given by an engineer who joined the company in 1986, worked at Short Missile Systems and Thales Air Defence on the Starstreak and LMM Martlet programmes, and is now chief technologist at Spirit AeroSystems. He notes that he is speaking in a personal capacity. He first reviews the company's general history and then its missiles, targets and drones.

Brothers Oswald, Horace and Eustace Short started out with balloons around 1901. In 1909 the Wrights commissioned six Wright Flyers from them, the world's first aircraft production contract. They later moved to Rochester (1914), opened an airship factory in Cardington (1915) and a Belfast plant with Harland and Wolff (1937). Their catalogue includes the Silver Streak, the Sunderland, the Stirling, the SC.1, the Belfast, the Skyvan, the SD330 and 360, and the RAF's Tucano. The company was nationalised in 1943, bought by Bombardier in 1989 and by Spirit in 2020.

In missiles, Shorts worked with the RAE's test vehicles. The RTV1Q achieved, in 1954 at Aberporth, the first interception of an uncrewed target by a guided weapon. The Green Light, first fired in 1956, led to the Sea Cat: the Royal Navy ordered it in 1957 and it was sold to around 19 countries. The company converted Canberra B2s into radio-controlled targets in the U.10 and U.14 versions, used at Woomera and Malta.

The Sky Spy was a self-funded ducted-fan VTOL, with a 60 hp engine and a maximum weight of 130 kg. It only ever flew tethered and was scrapped in the early 1990s. The Skeet target, launched by pneumatic catapult, was used to test the Blowpipe and the Starstreak. The Stiletto was a licence-built AQM-37C launched from a Canberra, reaching Mach 3.5. The talk closes with the Mosquito, the uncrewed combat system from the LANCA programme. Spirit was its prime contractor, and the RAF halted the programme at the design stage on 24 June 2022, with the wing and tail already built.