Laima crosses the Atlantic

On 21 August 1998 a model-aircraft-sized machine called Laima landed after 26 hours and 45 minutes in the air over the North Atlantic. It had flown 3,270 km with no one aboard and became the first unmanned aircraft to cross the Atlantic. Laima was an Aerosonde, and at the time it was the only product of a small company in the Columbia River Gorge, Washington, called Insitu. Its founders were engineers fascinated by miniature robotic aircraft, and the company had been set up in 1994.

Weather probes and tuna

The name came from the science it was meant to serve: measuring the atmosphere in situ, in place, rather than from a satellite. The Aerosonde was a long-range weather probe. Towards the end of the 1990s Insitu turned to a new idea, SeaScan, a small camera aircraft that tuna boats could launch to spot shoals and track them. Then came the invasion of Iraq in 2003. SeaScan, developed further in alliance with Boeing, became ScanEagle, and from August 2004 it was flying over Iraq. Insitu’s future was military.

ScanEagle goes to war

ScanEagle is small, with a wingspan of a little over three metres, but it can stay up for more than 20 hours, and a test aircraft once flew for 22 hours and 8 minutes. In April 2009 a Navy ScanEagle watched the lifeboat in which Somali pirates held Captain Richard Phillips of the Maersk Alabama. By July 2011 ScanEagles had flown 500,000 combat hours. Not all came home. In December 2012 Iran claimed to have captured one over the Gulf, and its Yasir drone looks remarkably like a copy.

Caught on a rope

The aircraft needs no runway. It is fired off a pneumatic catapult and recovered by the SkyHook, a tall pole with a rope hanging from it: guided by differential GPS, the drone flies into the rope and a hook on its wingtip catches it. The same system serves the larger twin-boom Integrator, chosen by the US Navy in June 2010 as the RQ-21A Blackjack, which first flew on 28 July 2012 and made its first flight at sea from USS Mesa Verde in February 2013. In 2022 the US gave Ukraine 15 ScanEagles.

From Boeing to Archer

Boeing, a long-time partner, bought Insitu in 2008. It added 2d3 in 2015 and launched a commercial unit in 2016, and China sanctioned it in December 2024 over arms sales to Taiwan. By 2026 it had built more than 3,500 unmanned aircraft, sold in 35 countries, with revenue of over $200 million a year, and its aircraft had logged 1.3 million flight hours. On 10 August 2026 Boeing agreed to sell Insitu, Wisk and SkyGrid to the electric air-taxi maker Archer Aviation, in exchange for a stake of nearly 20 per cent.

Továrny

• Bingen headquarters · Bingen, Washington — Headquarters and production in the Columbia River Gorge

Rekordy a prvenství

• First unmanned aircraft to cross the North Atlantic: Aerosonde Laima, 21 August 1998, 3,270 km in 26 h 45 min
• ScanEagle Block D endurance record for the type: 22 h 8 min