Over the past year, India's dispute with its neighbors over the border has attracted widespread global attention. Heading into the new year, it looks like this focus will continue. The two sides have held many high-level military talks, but due to some unreasonable demands put forward by the Indian side, the negotiations have not achieved constructive results. India still seems to want to gain an edge in the negotiations by strengthening its military deterrent. According to reports, the Indian military plans to send its long-developed Warrior UAV to enhance the Indian army's reconnaissance and ground support capabilities. So who has more advantages over China's Wing Loong UAV? Observers of the Russian media commented on this, saying that India's Warrior UAV is simply not comparable to China's Wing Loong UAV.
India's "Warrior" unmanned aerial system has a mediocre design and is divided into two models: Model 1 for reconnaissance missions and Type H for communications missions. However, both models of UAVs share a common weakness, that is, their limited combat radius of only 325 kilometers, 8 to 9 hours in the air, a maximum mission load of 350 kg, and can carry 8 Indian-made Cobra anti-tank missiles. Later, India developed the Warrior 2 unmanned aerial system with a range of 1,000 kilometers, which improved the combat radius and increased the time in the air to about 18 hours. Nevertheless, India's UAVs still need to verify their performance in real combat. Compared with the People's Liberation Army, which has long adhered to the "no war on the western front" and carried out defensive operations in Ladakh and other places, India may be at a disadvantage in the face of China's Wing Loong-2 UAV in eastern Ladakh. However, the situation may be different for the Western Front, as Pakistan is also equipped with the Wing Loong-2 integrated unmanned aerial system from China.
The Wing Loong-2 UAV is a multi-purpose UAV system integrating medium-altitude long-endurance, reconnaissance and strike designed and developed by Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute. The system includes the Wing Loong-2 UAV, ground station, mission payload and ground support system. It has the ability to take off and land fully autonomously and fly for long periods of time, and excels in coordinated combat and ground relay control. The Wing Loong 2 also adopts China's self-designed turboprop engine for the first time, which has the characteristics of high power, high thrust-to-weight ratio, low fuel consumption and high reliability, providing it with strong power support. As a result, the Wing Loong 2 has a maximum payload of 480 kg, which is 130 kg higher than India's Warrior UAV, and has a more diverse weapon configuration. In terms of endurance, the 20 hours of the Wing Loong 2 significantly exceeds the 18 hours of the Indian "Warrior" drone. Therefore, it can be said that India's "Warrior" UAV is still inferior to the Chinese Wing Loong 2 in terms of performance.
In short, there is a clear gap between India's Warrior UAV and China's Wing Loong UAV. The Wing Loong 2 UAV is comparable in combat capabilities to the US MQ9 Reaper UAV, and has the potential to further develop and expand mission capabilities. In any case, drones have already demonstrated their ability to control the situation on the battlefield in last year's Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and will play an irreplaceable role in future wars.