26 There is nothing like a modern high-intensity conflict for shaping military technologies, and the war in Ukraine has impacted uncrewed systems like no other. Tekever’s AR3 Evolution – the latest iteration of the Portuguese company’s 25 kg fixed-wing, mediumaltitude, long-endurance UAV system with optional VTOL capability – is a case in point. Earlier versions have served with the Ukrainian armed forces since 2022 as intelligence, surveillance and target acquisition assets. However, the rapidly evolving realities of operations against Russia, a re-emerged superpower, have driven a fundamental re-engineering of the air vehicle and the system as a whole to emphasise modularity, rapid reconfiguration, survivability, endurance and multi-platform coordination. Ricardo Mendes and Tiago Nunes, Tekever CEO and platforms director, respectively, explain the drivers and processes that have pushed and continue to push the development of the AR3 Evolution, referred to internally as the Mk9. Referencing earlier versions of the system, Mendes says that it has built on operational experience with multiple customers in diverse markets. “I would say the main driver for development and maturity has been its usage in Ukraine.” Integrated air defences Russia operates a multi-layered integrated air defence system that is widely acknowledged as the best in the world. Its ground-based air defences alone consist of radars, electronic warfare systems and electro-optical (EO) sensors networked with weapons whose effective range extends from hundreds of kilometres down to hundreds of metres or less, with overlapping, mutually supporting engagement envelopes. These are supported by jet fighters, airborne warning and control, and dedicated electronic warfare aircraft, as well as large and growing fleets of uncrewed aerial vehicles of many kinds. Since shipping the first systems in spring 2022, the AR3 has been through more than 100 incremental iterations. “That is a lot of learning and adaptation, so what we wanted to do with the Mk9 was catch up – from an engineering point of view – and consolidate the changes into a new version that captures everything we learned in these three years.” While these lessons apply to the platform, they also go far beyond, he argues. “There is also fundamental learning that has nothing specifically to do with the platform, although it fundamentally impacts how it is designed. This is the amount of variability that you face in missions and the flexibility you need from the system, which is tremendous and constant.” He cautions that while people expect a very rapid development cycle, they also expect it to slow down, when in fact the They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and Peter Donaldson discovers why for one company supplying UAVs to Ukraine August/September 2025 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Front-line innovation
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