JSW tests float-equipped UAV for hydrophone deployment
JSW Wielki V2 float UAV at Drone World Expo 2026 (Janes/Sam Wise)
Polish company Jastrzębska Spółka Węglowa (JSW) demonstrated its Wielki V2 float-equipped unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) at the Drone World Expo 2026, held in Warsaw from 3-5 March.
JSW is developing the system for hydrophone deployment for the detection of USVs and submarines. It has tested the quadcopter UAV for this purpose under a programme entitled “Submarine detection, classification and tracking using a swarm of unmanned aerial vehicles carried by a surface platform”.
The Wielki V2 has a maximum payload of 8 kg with a maximum take-off weight of 25 kg. JSW has been testing the UAV with a hydrophone payload which is lowered into the water by a proprietary AeroWinch with a 25 m long waterproof cable. The Wielki V2 can perform this either from a height above the water or while floating on the surface.
The UAV, which is fully flight and float tested, can be used in a swarm with mission planning controlled by a central operating station using open software. It has an NVIDIA Jetson computer onboard. During the testing programme the UAVs were controlled by JSW and directed by a military operator, with the mission data being fed to the military via an application programming interface (API) for processing and exploitation. It is also capable of landing on a landing pad carried by a surface platform.
Although it has so far only been tested with hydrophones, the company says that other payloads such as magnetic anomaly detectors could be considered in the future.
Krzysztof Kaźmierczak, team leader for the Wielki V2 project at JSW, told Janes
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