BY B.C. KESSNER

TEL AVIV, Israel - Since the recent unveiling of its new D-STAMP, or Daylight STAbilized Miniature Payload for small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), Israel’s Controp has seen interest in the system rise as dramatically as local competition has started to fall away, a company official here said.

"In the last few weeks, we have moved to the very advanced stages of deals with virtually all Israeli small UAV manufacturers to supply them with our product,” Lori Erlich, Controp’s marketing and communications manager, told Defense Daily last week.

The company introduced D-STAMP in February at Aero India 2005 and displayed it again at a recent Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conference on low-intensity conflict (LIC). Already, there is great demand for the production system that is being manufactured by the order, Erlich said. “We are receiving worldwide inquiries on a daily basis.”

Before D-STAMP, what did not exist for mini-UAVs--perhaps more commonly referred to in the United States as small UAVs, in the six to 25-pound class--was a payload that was stabilized and that provided a “pointing capability,” Erlich said.

“We provided the breakthrough…these two important features had never before been achieved in a mini-payload.”

Because of the shortfall, industry and customers had to rely on small UAVs with fixed cameras that had to be pointed by flying relative to a target. “When the aircraft had to maneuver to see [the result was] a very shaky picture,” she said.

Once a camera is stabilized it can provide higher resolution through a longer focal length, as D-STAMP does, Erlich said.

The sensor also has an electronic zoom up to 10X, which enables the operator to choose a wide field of view for maximum coverage, and then zoom to a target, she added.

Israel’s Elbit Systems [ESLT] last week delivered its first Skylark mini-UAV system to the IDF’s Ground Forces Command (Defense Daily, Mar. 31).

Israel’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) last year selected Skylark ... the IDF said its new mini-UAV is “designed for day and night observation and data collection.” Controp currently lists D-STAMP as having an “option for night observation capability” and Erlich was not permitted to say when a nighttime payload would be released. “The option will be more apparent in the near future,” she said.

Both the day and night payloads for Skylark’s current configuration are made in house by Elbit or its Opgal subsidiary, an Elbit spokesperson told Defense Daily yesterday. Both payloads are stabilized, she added.

The MoD has recently conducted flight tests with a variety of small payloads and concluded that D-STAMP met its requirements most efficiently, an industry source said.

D-STAMP weighs less than a pound and a half and is designed especially for small UAVs to conduct a host of “over the hill” or “behind the building” reconnaissance missions, and is well suited for forces involved in LIC and operations in urban terrain.

There has been a great deal of interest in D-STAMP from the United States and several countries in Western Europe and Asia, Erlich said. Though she could not discuss particular customers, she acknowledged that there have been international sales in addition to purchases by the MoD and Israeli industrial partners.

The company cannot discuss the price for business reasons, but Controp considers the system a cost-effective bargain, Erlich said. “Is it disposable? Sort of…it is the nature of small UAVs, that if they crash, nothing happens to a person and it is not a super expensive loss."