Not long before that, Russia's Kronstadt Group and a friendly neighbor reached an agreement to export the "Orion E" attack drone, which will be delivered in 2022, and this transaction is the first time that Russian drones have been exported abroad. At the same time, the company also claimed that more than 20 buyers currently have the intention to buy this drone.
As a typical representative of Russian and Chinese UAVs in recent years, the "Orion E" UAV has made full use of advanced technologies such as avionics communications and engines, fundamentally changing people's perception of the long-term backwardness of Russian UAVs.
It is understood that since the new century, the world's military powers have begun to launch all kinds of integrated unmanned aerial vehicles. Equipped with leading reconnaissance, communications, and attack systems, these drones have gradually become feared aerial equipment. It is reported that such UAVs have extremely obvious advantages, such as having a stay-in-space capacity of more than 30 hours and a combat area of 6,000 kilometers; being able to carry out large-scale reconnaissance and carrying out precision attacks; and having significant cost-effective advantages, which fundamentally eliminate casualties. In this way, this type of unmanned aerial vehicle has a key role in the continuous advancement of the network-centric combat system.
In terms of mounting capacity, "Orion" can only meet 200 kg of ammunition storage, which is not comparable to drones such as "Pterodactyl-2". Compared with the United States and other drone powers, "Orion" always appears to have insufficient offensive strength, although it can carry several small missiles and other weapons.
As early as the Cold War era, the Soviet Union attached great importance to the study of unmanned aerial vehicles, and introduced the Tu 143 unmanned aerial vehicle by borrowing from the US military's "Firebee" unmanned aerial vehicle. It is reported that the UAV has the fastest flight rate of 960 km / h, and the maximum flight ceiling can reach 2000 meters. Although figure 143 is obviously inferior to the "fire bee" in terms of strength, this is the result of the Soviet Union's intensive research and development for several years, which is also very worthy of recognition. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia was limited by the practical dilemma of insufficient funds, and finally had to stop the research and development of unmanned aerial vehicles, resulting in the technical strength being greatly expanded by other countries.
In recent years, with the help of technology accumulation and innovation, Russia has finally made progress in the field of domestic unmanned aerial vehicles and opened the process of research and development deployment. In addition to the "Orion" mentioned above, Russia has also created a "Altair" UAV with a twin-engine turboprop engine.
On the whole, although the "Orion" UAV cannot be compared with the UAV of the United States and other major countries for the time being, it represents the real strength of Russia. For example, it uses modular design features; a large number of materials such as carbon fiber are used to reduce the actual weight; and it can adapt to the environment to adjust the on-board equipment.
Through the appearance of drones such as "Orion", Russia has finally caught up in this field, but it needs to make more arduous efforts to surpass the drone power.