Last week, the Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR) launched the Quick Response Drone Facility (QRDF) in Marknesse. This facility contributes to the broader ambition of Defence to become a leader in the field of unmanned systems, together with industry and knowledge institutions. The Minister of Defence, Ruben Brekelmans, was present to support the importance of the QRDF facility and to confirm the ambition of Defence to innovate faster.
For defence, unmanned systems (drones) are playing an increasingly important role in carrying out their task. The war in Ukraine shows that they are being deployed on a large scale: it is not only a battle between armed forces, but also a battle between industries and innovation. An important factor on the battlefield is who can produce the most, innovate the fastest and sustain this the longest.
In order to give the armed forces and maintain an advantage in the battle, it is essential to quickly acquire, share and apply knowledge and experience. The Quick Response Drone Facility (QRDF) of NLR is a key initiative to achieve this by combining existing knowledge, expertise and facilities with integrated collaboration between industry, applied knowledge institutions and partners. This allows lessons from the field to be quickly converted into solutions. The objective of the QRDF is to be able to make a new drone or drone functionality operationally available to Defence within four to six weeks, with integrated collaboration being central to ensuring implementation and scalability.
QRDF as a driving force behind drone innovation
NLR's location in the municipality of Noordoostpolder offers an optimal opportunity for the development of unmanned systems. For example, there is closed airspace where people can fly above and around the NLR site with non-certified, experimental unmanned systems. There is also a connection to the knowledge and test centre for smart mobility (MITC) and NLR has all kinds of facilities, such as the Drone centre and the Automated Composites & Metal Manufacturing Technology Centre, to enable research and testing into the innovative scalable solutions that Defence needs.
Bert Thuis, Vice President Aerospace Vehicles at NLR, states: “The QRDF is part of a broader R&D, test and development environment in Flevoland, in which we can make a new drone or functionality operational for Defence in a few weeks. As a strategic knowledge partner for Defence, we can quickly switch with parties at a strategic level. With drones, we see a much higher innovation rate than with aircraft, for example, with smaller industrial parties leading the way. The QRDF offers an ideal opportunity to learn from each other and create space for short-cycle innovation.”
“Thanks to QRDF, we were able to develop essential drone functionalities to a high level within six weeks and then demonstrate them operationally to the requirements setters at the Ministry of Defence. This project underlined the strength of the collaboration between us as an industrial party and NLR as a knowledge institution – a valuable combination of expertise and testing capacity. QRDF is an important step towards rapidly translating operational needs into commercial strength,” adds Lennart Bult, co-founder of Emergent Swarm Solutions.
