The Royal Artillery of the British Army are the sole operators of the GEC/Marconi/ BAe Systems Phoenix battlefield UAV and given the long and troubled development of the system, its hardly surprising that no other country showed any interest in purchasing and operating Phoenix.

The requirement for a battlefield UAV to support the British Army and integrate with the Battlefield Artillery Target Engagement System (BATES), was originally outlined in the early 1980's with a planned in service date of 1989 and the first example actually flew in 1986. However, all kinds of problems were encountered and in 1995, with no sign that Phoenix would actually work as advertised, a complete review of the project was undertaken and alternative systems considered. As is so often the case with a British defence procurement contract let to a British company that fails to deliver, the decision was made to renegotiate the contract and allow the in service date to slip yet again to Dec 1998. Phoenix managed to stagger into service in 1999 and saw limited service in Kosovo that year; eventually a total of 198 were delivered, many have been lost in accidents and a number of others have been cannibalised for spares.

Constructed mainly of Kevlar, glass fibre, carbon reinforced plastics and Nomex honeycomb, Phoenix is powered by a 25hp two-stroke flat twin 'tractor' engine. Phoenix has a wingspan of 18 ft, can carry a payload of 110 lbs, cruises at around 70 kts and has a maximum ceiling of 8,000 ft. The radius of action is around 38 nms from the ground station and endurance 5 hrs.

Phoenix is launched by a pneumatic / hydraulic catapult from the back of a specially designed Army truck, which can usually be ready to launch within an hour of reaching the launch site; unfortunately the launch truck is too large to fit into the back of a C-130 or be underslung from a helicopter, making its deployment a slow process and hardly compatible with the expeditionary forces concept for the Army. One dedicated groundstation can control two Phoenix UAV's which are guided by a programmed GPS system or a backup radio system. However, all Phoenix carries is an infrared imaging system and the means to datalink the images - crucially it does not carry a laser designator. Phoenix is recovered by parachute, landing on its back with the impact being taken by a crushable hump.

The final design for the Phoenix appears to be a classic example of a British system designed by committee with different agendas. Rather than a neat design with the sensors contained within the fuselage, the sensor payload, an infra-red imager, is slung in a pod underneath the fuselage. The end result is a UAV that looks like the losing entry, by a bunch of failed YTS graduates, in a 'design your own Heath-Robinson UAV competition' using components found in the nearest scrapyard. The old adage - if it looks right, it probably is right, certainly applies to Phoenix, which looks wrong and usually doesn't work. Because of all the delays in getting this relatively unsophisticated UAV into service, the British Army finally ended up accepting Phoenix into service when it was already effectively obsolete, despite each Phoenix eventually costing a disgraceful £1.5M each.

Unsurprisingly, Phoenix has suffered a high attrition rate in active service. A total of 23 were lost in Gulf War II, between Mar-Apr 03, where it was nicknamed the 'Bugger-Off' by British troops because they generally never returned from a sortie - the residents of Basra are welcome to them. It is little short of shameful that a country like Britain, with it's industrial rescources and proud record of innovation, can produce a heap of rubbish like Phoenix and 'fob it off' on the military. I'm sure that every serviceman who had to struggle to get Phoenix to work successfully, must have wished the UK had simply done what the US Navy did and build an Israeli UAV under licence.

Thankfully, the replacement for Phoenix, known as Watchkeeper, is already on the drawing boards - the contract should have been placed in 2004, with entry into service planned for 2006. For all the usual political and financial reasons that plague UK defence procurement, the Watchkeeper contract kept slipping to the right but in 2005 it was eventually awarded to Elbit Systems of Israel for the supply of a number of Hermes 450 UAVs and supporting ground equipment with an in-service date of 2010. However, this delay only served to further highlight the inability of the Phoenix to operate in hot/high conditions and as an interim solution to the lack of effective dedicated UK ISTAR assets in Iraq and Afghanistan, a number of Hermes 450 UAVs and supporting equipment have been leased from Elbit to undertake these taks until Watchkeeper finally enters service. Consequently, as the Phoenix system was now no longer required on 31 Mar 2008 it was retired from operational service.

Updated May 2008