Switches for washing machines

Few aircraft makers began with washing machines. Schiebel was founded in Vienna in 1951 to make small electrical components such as microswitches, and later remote controls. For more than thirty years it was an unremarkable family electronics firm. Then, in the mid-1980s, the company discovered that its know-how could be turned to a grimmer purpose: finding buried landmines. It sold its AN-19/2 detector first to the Swedish Army, and in 1991 won the contract that made it: the US Army adopted the set as the AN/PSS-12, with an order for around 18,000 units, and Schiebel became the world market leader in mine detection.

Eighteen thousand mine detectors

In 1994 Schiebel started work on something far more ambitious, an unmanned helicopter. Its first, the Camcopter 5.1, appeared in early 2000. The redesign that followed, developed from 2003 to 2005, became the Camcopter S-100: a 200 kg rotorcraft with a carbon-fibre body, a Schiebel-built Wankel engine, six hours’ endurance and a top speed of 220 km/h. It won Austria’s Adolf Loos state prize for design in 2005. In 2006 the company opened a new factory at Wiener Neustadt, in the region known as the cradle of Austrian aviation, where each Camcopter takes about a week to assemble.

A helicopter with nobody aboard

The launch customer was the United Arab Emirates Army, which ordered 40 with an option for 40 more. The S-100 found its true niche at sea, where a small helicopter that needs no pilot and little deck space suits frigates and patrol ships. Navies tested and bought it one after another: Germany, France, Italy, which in 2014 chose it as its main shipboard drone, Australia in 2017, the Royal Navy as Peregrine in 2023, Canada in 2025 and Greece in 2026. By 2016 the Camcopter accounted for about 90 per cent of turnover, all of it from abroad, with 20 per cent ploughed back into research.

From Abu Dhabi to the Royal Navy

Selling a dual-use drone to the world has brought Schiebel trouble as well as orders. Four Camcopters bought by Libya in 2009 ended up under the command of the Khamis Brigade, Gaddafi’s elite unit. China’s navy bought 18 systems in 2010, and a Russian licence-built version, the Horizon Air S-100, was adopted for coast-guard patrol boats. A possible 2019 export to Myanmar was reported as a breach of the arms embargo. In May 2012 an Austrian Schiebel engineer was killed when an S-100 crashed into its control vehicle during a test in Incheon, South Korea. The company remains privately held, with Hans Georg Schiebel on its supervisory board and Hannes Hecher as chief executive.

Fábricas

• Wiener Neustadt production facility · Wiener Neustadt, Lower Austria — Built 2004–2006, opened September 2006; Camcopter assembly and carbon composites
• Vienna headquarters · Margareten, Vienna

Pessoas

• Hans Georg Schiebel · owner, chairman of the supervisory board
• Hannes Hecher · chief executive

Recordes e pioneirismos

• First unmanned helicopter to fly from an Italian Navy vessel, April 2012
• Adolf Loos State Prize for Design, 2005