Simplifying UAV helicopter operations with Nord-Lock® Washers

The Spain-based Alpha Unmanned Systems was searching for dependable military-grade fastening components, it found Nord-Lock.

In the world of tactical unmanned aircraft, simplicity and reliability are essential. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) need to work right out of the box, which requires being easy to operate and maintain.

For Alpha Unmanned Systems, a global leader in UAV helicopters, that means constantly evaluating improvements to their systems, often seeking simple solutions to advance design and streamline operations.

The Madrid-headquartered Alpha manufactures tactical UAVs helicopters. Built for military applications, they’re fuel-powered and specifically developed for marine operations, such as maneuvering from the back of a small moving ship with fully automatic flight capabilities, including take-off and landing.

According to Álvaro Escarpenter, CTO and Founder at Alpha Unmanned Systems, military units, navies, and border forces around the world utilize the company’s UAV helicopters for surveillance, observation, and reconnaissance.

“We have customers in 14 countries – from the Greek Navy, who operate them from different ships in the Aegean, to the Bulgarian border police, who use them in coordination with Frontex (the EU’s agency for border control),” says Escarpenter.

So when Alpha needed a replacement component to ensure the dependability of its UAV helicopters that could be implemented simply, it looked beyond Spain’s borders and found the Swedish-made Nord-Lock wedgelocking washer.

Preventative Design Improvements

A key feature that differentiates the UAVs of Alpha Unmanned Systems from many others is the integration of a 100cc boxer engine into each design. It can run on gasoline and on heavy fuel, which is an important requirement for safer naval operations. More importantly, being fuel-powered gives Alpha’s UAV helicopters an advantage over similarly classed battery-powered platforms.

“If a customer wants to fly one of our helicopters 100 kilometers away on an automated mission to search out targets or to do reconnaissance, then the fact that it’s fuel-powered means they’ve got that range,” explains Escarpenter. “It also enables up to four hours of autonomy and the ability to lift around four kilos, which is quite a lot for its size.”

Fuel-powered helicopter platforms operate at high engine revolution levels. In late 2025, Alpha’s design and manufacturing team, leveraging continuous daily flight evaluations of each UAV helicopter system, identified an opportunity for a preventative design improvement on the exhaust manifold system.

Another aircraft maker might have just added verifying and retorquing specific bolted connections as a critical point in the platform’s pre- and post-flight checklists, but Alpha wanted to do more – address the issue on the manufacturing side but without redesigning anything, especially the engine.

“We really put a lot of care and attention on the engine,” says Pablo Frutos, Head of Manufacturing at Alpha. “we needed to find a long-term, reliable solution, which is what led us to Nord-Lock.”

Military-grade component with no need to retorque

It didn’t take the manufacturing team at Alpha Unmanned Systems long to discover Nord-Lock and its secure-locking washers. Using wedge-locking technology, Nord-Lock wedge-locking washers keep bolted joints from loosening with tension rather than friction and prevent unintentional rotation once tightened. What’s more, they’re high-quality made, fitting well within military-grade standards, and have long been a staple in the global defence industry.

By the end of 2025, Alpha’s daily flight operations included UAV helicopters with Nord-Lock wedge-locking washers. The company plans to continue running the tests with in-depth maintenance overhauls after 50, 100, and 200 hours of flying. But so far, according to Frutos, everything checks out.

“The results have been pretty positive. We’re seeing that the bolts remain in place and there's no need to retorque,” he says. “And our pre-flight checks have been simplified.”

The benefits of using Nord-Lock’s washer, however, go beyond secure bolted connections. As Frutos explains, it’s not only simplified operations but also taken a potential issue off the table – furthering the dependability of Alpha Unmanned Systems.

“At the end of the day, if the Indonesian Coast Guard – which is a customer of ours – invests in a multimillion-dollar platform to survey the islands and coasts around Indonesia, then they want a system that’s going to respond, that’s reliable, and that is relatively easy to maintain and deploy,” he says. To provide that, Alpha must constantly identify ways to enhance and upgrade its UAV helicopters.

“With Nord-Lock, we’ve gone with what may look like a simple solution," says Frutos. “But it’s all about having a proven, well-designed, well-manufactured military-grade component that just fits into the system very easily.”