This paper presents the development of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) system with Surveillance, Watch, Autonomous Flight and Navigation (SWAN) capability for beyond-visual-range (BVR) flight. The SWAN UAV is a newly developed, inherently stable, small air vehicle, which is used as a test bed for flight testing of new controller designs. The SWAN development project can be divided into three streams: one is the design and fabrication of a high-performance UAV; another is the development of the avionics and data link; the last is the realization of autonomous flight utilising the flight controller design to provide stability and guidance control. The integrated flight control system comprises sensors, an embedded single board computer, a data link, servo control and ground control station. The flight controller, based on the core of a PID controller augmented with output saturation, is designed using a model of the vehicle obtained from discrete-time linear control theory. The multiple way-point navigation, with course-over-ground flight capability, is also designed for ground target tracking. All system functions have been examined, implemented, and finally flight demonstrated with successful data analysis, including an over-sea flight test beyond the visual range of longer than 8 km. The conduct of the trials, the further required work identified from the trials, and the value to the students of the hands-on experience gained from the project, are described.