Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) or drones, are self-powered aircraft that do not carry a human operator, uses aerodynamic forces to provide vehicle lift, are autonomously and/or remotely operated, may be expendable or recoverable and may carry lethal or nonlethal payloads. UAS may be used in military, commercial, scientific, recreational and other applications. For example, military applications may include intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions as well as attack missions. Civil applications may include aerial photography, search and rescue missions, inspection of utility lines and pipelines, humanitarian aid including delivering food, medicine and other supplies to inaccessible regions, environment monitoring, border patrol missions, cargo transportation, forest fire detection and monitoring, accident investigation and crowd monitoring, to name a few.
Recently, military organizations have indicated a desire for small unmanned aircraft systems that are operable as soldier borne sensors (SBS). Such soldier borne sensors should be easy to transport without putting a weight burden on the soldier and simple to deploy yet be capable of continuous flight during certain adverse conditions for minutes or hours. In addition, such soldier borne sensors should be capable of remote and/or autonomous flight in an operating theater of hundreds or thousands of meters including visual line of sight operations. Further, such soldier borne sensors should be capable of providing real-time information relevant to the area immediately surrounding the soldiers, enabling the soldiers to assess and respond to the most eminent threat and/or rapidly changing threats.