Few people know, but in the early 1980s, the Soviet Union firmly shared the palm of UAV production in the world with the US, and alone unmanned systems "Flight" with "drones" Tu-143 in service stood about a thousand.
AT 1988 , Moscow and all reached the absolute top spot, unmanned made a space flight and landing of the famous Buran. In subsequent years of "perestroika", and then binge "democracy" all was lost, and the reduction of Russia in the 2000s, Moscow had to start this way first.
The criticality of the events of issue 2008 of the year, when an operation to force Georgia to peace bared need not only modernization and rehabilitation, but also create from scratch lost competencies. Aspect of unmanned aircraft was put on a priority level for that, that lag behind the West in these technologies to 2009 the year was of the order 20 years.
In view of the, that their own base to the point of critical outdated, I had to start on the Chinese way, due to purchases from resellers technology.
Essentially, up until recently, the main part of the park UAV Russia was reduced to machines "Outpost", collected from Israeli components, as well as an entire galaxy of their own small UAVs outside while in the conditional "strategic" niche.
However, this type of "Israeli" drone belonged to the middle class (250 km-range, 17,5 hour flight autonomy and 120 kg payload), while the modern realities require the development of more serious machines.
Due to the current situation and stubborn silence of the Russian Ministry of Defense in the media blossomed defeatism, wherein the internal 'liberal' press ratings were significantly worse, than in the west. The sources do not say tired, what, despite a spurt in the number of, Russia 'very far from adopting their own UAVs »MALE-class (Medium-altitude long-endurance, medium-large with a flight time) and the more HALE-UAVs, ie high altitude UAV conditionally "strategic" level. For the last 5 s alarmism these estimates came before, that even in the past 2018 year backlog of Moscow from the United States were assessed in all of the same two decades.
but in the summer 2019 The situation was turned on its head. As is the case with the latest breakthroughs in the field of strategic, voiced in 2018 year, in this matter and a half weeks of August 2019 , there was something similar.
16 August its first flight made the latest Russian heavy drone MALE-class "hunter" design bureau "dry". Russian unobtrusive percussion drone was carried out according to the scheme of the flying wing and ended up equipped with turbojet engine and is completely domestic series AL-31, as well as the Russian equipment, Allows you to optronic, electronic and other types of intelligence. Naturally, armed drones to fully domestic.
A week later 20 August the Ministry of Defense published the following video, This time the first flight of six-ton super-long drone "Altius-U" design bureau Simon. The peculiarity of this machine (intermediate class between MALE and HALE), was that, that it for the first time in the history of the Russian unmanned aircraft was from the ground up is designed and developed complex management of protected trigger channel, making distance control, in fact, unlimited.
It is the "Altair" and "Hunter" were largely iconic machines, because their implementation was carried out with the maximum emphasis on the domestic element base, and for this, in its turn, only Altair had to create a co-operation of 70 more than high-tech enterprises. Almost everything in these shock drones created from scratch, from the controls and on-board equipment to the intelligence systems monitoring units.
After another two days, Defense has published material with a clear demonstration of the first UAV flight intelligence "Forpost-R". But not to "license" Outpost, which is a copy of the Israeli IAI Searcher Mk II, and a completely redesigned model, which according to authorities is still only the outer contours. "Advanced post-P" is now equipped with ADF-85 domestic motor, I received a new Russian "radio link", will increase the radius in the 100 kilometers, system to overcome the enemy electronic warfare, etc..
certainly, we still lag behind the US in this type of military systems, since the beginning of the revival with 2009 of the year, first of all, We set object to overcome the technological gap length 20 years. But at the same time today in quantitative terms, Russia ranks second in the world after the US drones. 4 thousands of drones - the second largest park after America and a similar number was achieved not without reason.
As demonstrated by operation of Russia in Syria, Where, According to the Head Office building, development and application of UAVs of the General Staff of the Russian Federation, It was performed more than 23,000 departures coating 140 000 hours, conflicts of the modern type is already inconceivable without the resources to intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) unmanned type.
The main problem for Russia are not technical, scientific or personnel issues, and economic aspect. Modern capitalism is designed so, that cancels the state border, so, when only one of New York with the support of a large-scale federal agencies work immediately 7 the largest centers for the development of UAVs and a number of private companies, but the United States itself are actively trying to buy Russian "brains", it is very difficult to resist.
Just at the beginning of this year, "Department of business relocation and employees" of the state (cover up a structure of the state "cleaner") Russia proposed ADA Aerospace - one of the leading private developers of UAVs in Russia, 200 million dollar investment, the property, employee benefits, to 4 thousands of square meters of working space, housing aid, grants, subsidies and everything you need to move and adapt to the US. Compete with such an approach is practically impossible to Moscow.
In view of this development of the UAV base in our country bear the public-private or completely public entities, but which it obtained several orders for the same model. In particular, Corporation "Irkut" at the end 2018 has started testing an unmanned aerial vehicle "Breakthrough", in the status of negotiation with the customer are two promising UAV - reactive "Thunder", KB named Simon, and the impact of UAV "Zenica" former CB "Sokol". Develops project reconnaissance and strike UAVs Dozor-600 companies "Transas", at the end of the queue "Orion" apparatus of Sistema, and so on…
Also, do not forget about the Russian projects of unmanned submarines "cephalopod" and "status-6", called upon to play an active role in naval battles, and especially about having no analogues robotic UAVs "Poseidon".
Ruslan Hubiev
