Elbit’s Hermes 450 May Change Agriculture As We Know It

Elbit’s Hermes 450 May Change Agriculture As We Know It

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The Elbit Systems Hermes 450 aircraft took off from the Hillsboro airport on May 20th. to start a summer-long project that will take pictures of farmland in the fertile Red River Valley. The test is meant to show whether the larger drone is more efficient to capture imagery of agricultural land than satellites or smaller unmanned aircraft.

North Dakota is believed to be the only state qualified to fly the aircraft because it has clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly drones at higher altitudes. According to UASVision, the FAA in 2013 selected North Dakota as one of six drone test sites in the US and has since approved the site to fly above the current 60 meters blanket for most of the country.

The Hermes 450, which is 6 meters long with a 10 meter wing span, is expected to take pictures as high as 2,500 meters. It will cover an area about 6 kilometers wide by 60 kilometers long.

The project is the brainchild of North Dakota State University researcher John Nowatzki, who has spent the last 18 months waiting for Friday’s debut. He believes the larger drone will be more cost-effective by collecting more data over a larger area more quickly. “I feel pretty good about it,” Nowatzki said on the tarmac while handlers prepared the drone for takeoff. “There have been a lot of efforts with small ones. This is the first time with one this large.”

Half of the more than $700,000 project is being funded by a North Dakota Department of Commerce grant and the other half by Elbit Systems, which is hoping to eventually sell the imagery to producers and other farm groups. The drone, ground control station and other equipment were shipped from Tel Aviv, and assembled by a crew from the Israeli company.