Midrand-based Advanced Technologies and Engineering (ATE) has doubled its unmanned aerial systems (UAS) offerings. The Company unveiled two new unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) at the Africa Aerospace and Defence show in Cape Town. The company says it is on the cusp of signing a deal with an unnamed "security agency" for the Kiwit hand-launched UAV. The police have said they require UAVs for the 2010 Soccer World Cup and were considering acquiring one system per stadium — a total of 10. The Roadrunner and Sentinel 500M are the new "flying robots" in the ATE stable.

Sentinel builds on the Vulture system, of which a second is now being delivered to the South African Artillery, in addition to one system exported to China. The Sentinel 500M is the first of a new family of air vehicles and was developed with an eye on the SA Army's Project Cytoon. It aims to give 1 SA Tactical Intelligence Regiment an enhanced battlefield surveillance capability, based on a mix of UAV, ground surveillance radars and thermal imagers. The 150-kg airplane can carry a 30-kg payload 200-km, at 110-km/h, for up to six hours. The aircraft uses the same vacuum launcher and ground station as the Vulture. The Sentinel can also be used for a variety of electronic warfare tasks, including signals collection, direction finding and jamming.

The Roadrunner is a 6-kg mini UAV capable of lifting 1-kg for 45 minutes to an hour. ATE CEO Willie van Biljon believes the Roadrunner is an excellent pursuit vehicle for police, with the plane's rhomboid wings giving it a "higher strength and reduces the size of the airframe in comparison to larger aircraft with similar lift characteristics". South Africa was an early adopter of UAS technology, first flying them in the 1980s. In the 1990s, UAVs were deployed over urban areas to monitor the country's first non-racial elections, making Denel's Seeker one of the first unmanned aircraft to fly in airspace normally reserved for manned aircraft and strictly monitored by state air traffic controllers.