Founded in 2007, Callen-Lenz has its roots in aviation consultancy. Early focus was the commissioning and management of uncrewed flight operations services, with the founders and senior team bringing a wealth of crewed aviation experience as aircrew, engineers and innovators.
In 2010, Callen-Lenz became a world leader in the breakthrough technology of drone-based photogrammetric data capture. This pioneering remote sensing service uses in-house designed aircraft with modified sensors to fly over forests and crops gathering 3D and multispectral data. Innovation and pioneering technology have been the hallmarks of Callen-Lenz since the start.
Since 2012, Callen-Lenz has pioneered Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) testing and evaluation as a commercial operation, supporting trials for the UK MoD and commercial customers. Trials services then grew to encompass regular provision of BVLOS counter-UAS target services and flight testing of large military and commercial UAS.
In 2013, Callen-Lenz acquired SkyCircuits, which became a wholly owned subsidiary of Callen-Lenz. SkyCircuits develops high-integrity autopilots for use in crewed and uncrewed systems. SkyCircuits launched the first autopilot/mission management system, SC2, for use across the civil and defence markets. Since 2013, the SC2 has architecturally evolved, leading to the design and manufacture of the SC3 in 2019, a more powerful and sophisticated autopilot. SkyCircuits has produced hundreds of autopilots since 2013 and is best-in-class, readily tailored and integrated into a wide variety of platform configurations.
Over the last seven years, Callen-Lenz has supported numerous UK and overseas organisations in their drone, RPAS and EVTOL/PAV developments through design and prototyping services, all aspects of design and safety analysis and, crucially, in the development of novel flight control and mission management avionics solutions.
Callen-Lenz has served the UK MoD since the company’s beginning, providing trials, research, and development services and, more recently, UAS products. No other UK company provides the same breadth of capabilities in the UAS domain across rapid, low-cost technology development and testing.
In 2019, Callen-Lenz started the design, development, and manufacture of our key UAS product, Koios, in our UK facility located in rural Wiltshire. Koios is a medium VTOL UAS which offers fully autonomous operations providing strategic ISR capabilities with a tactical footprint.
Callen-Lenz has gone through a period of rapid growth over the last few years. Growing 40% year on year since 2019, the company has now expanded from a small to a medium sized company with the number of Callen-Lenz employees increasing from 46 to 90 between 2020 and 2022.
As Callen-Lenz continues to grow and push the boundaries of technology across crewed and uncrewed aviation, we owe our success to the strength and commitment of our team, who deliver world-class innovation, services and products to support the future growth of the company.
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