DJ Dyer CEng MIEE

General Manager, UAV Systems, Cranfield Aerospace Ltd

After completing a Student Apprenticeship, in 1969, at British Aircraft Corporation (GW) Stevenage, Dave was appointed as a Development Engineer in the Precision Products Group, where he worked on a variety of projects involving both analogue and digital circuit design.

In 1971 Dave was appointed as a Technical Officer in the Computing Laboratory of the Department of Electronic and Control Engineering at Cranfield Institute of Technology.

In 1978 he commenced an involvement with Unmanned Air Vehicles which has continued to date. The first project was the MACHAN UAV project, for Marconi Avionics, where he was responsible for electronic design of the digital Flight Control System (FCS) and air vehicle systems. The MACHAN FCS is believed to be the first UAV digital flight control system to fly in the World.

In 1983, Dave transferred to the College of Aeronautics and in 1997 was appointed as leader of the Control Systems Group in Cranfield Aerospace Ltd, and more recently, UAV Systems Group General Manager responsible for Operational and Technical Management of the Group.

Some examples of UAV related contracts, for which Dave had project and technical management responsibility are as follows:

Design and Manufacture of a lightweight Digital Flight Control System (DFCS) for UAV.
Consultancy on UAV FCS for Control Technologies Inc in Vancouver BC Canada.
Flight Trials of the DFCS and XRAE1 air vehicle performance evaluation.
The development and flight trials of the Gust Insensitive flight control system.
DERA(F) Battle Group UAV programme, resulting in a ‘deskilled’ UAV operating system.
Design and development of a Battle Group UAV simulator for operational system studies.
UAV system for meteorological monitoring in support of a European research programme.
Design and Development of the ‘Observer’ UAV system.
Design and development of the ‘MinO’ UAV System.
The Boeing X-48B BWB/LSV programme.

Dave has authored and co-authored numerous conference papers on the subject of UAVs.

Dave is a Member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers and is registered as Chartered Engineer (CEng).