First China tried to clone the Predator, and it went kablooey in the woods. Now new footage shows that Russia’s Predator counterpart met an equally unflattering fate: a wobbly takeoff followed by a very messy explosion.
Flightglobal explains this crash is likely the reason Russia, a giant, sophisticated military power, oddly doesn’t have any UAV chips on the table at all — after a failure this spectacular in 2010, it was back to the drawing board. But I’m sure the drawing board has been busy; with countries like the US feeding an increasing amount of its killing-people-activity through armed drones, no major military is going to want to sit on the ground and gaze up, pouting. Little tip to Russia: try a better name than the “Stork” next time. Y’know, just might inspire a little extra engineering confidence. [FlightGlobal via sUAS News]
EckyThump
Wednesday, September 21, 2011 at 8:49 AMNot exactly quite, is it? Bloody hell Boris, props are so passee these days! #]
JonBOY
Wednesday, September 21, 2011 at 10:24 AMI’d be very surprised if this was actually Russia’s attempt at producing a Drone. It looks to me like something that might be produced by an enthusiast of radio controlled aircraft.
Matt L
Wednesday, September 21, 2011 at 3:14 PMIt didn’t look promising from the start, they shouldn’t have even attempted the lift while it was swaying like that, it seemed to have some sort of weight issue on one side, and was trying to correct itself.
Terry
Wednesday, September 21, 2011 at 4:25 PMD’oh.
Someone’s hard work and long hours of putting that thing together gone in a matter of seconds.
However, surely it can’t be too hard to RC-ify a plane cannit?
What? No computer simulation available to test basic aerodynamic capabilities?
Steve
Wednesday, September 21, 2011 at 11:48 PMThey should have contracted Hammer Industries.
Gerald
Thursday, September 22, 2011 at 1:11 AMWhat I detest about western blogs is their incessant attempts to label every attempt by rising nations as copying. We saw this with the article on the apparent Chinese copy of the Predator and it drives me insane. Do you know why they may use a similar design? Because it works. Do I see Boeing saying to Airbus, “Hey, hey, hey mate. Watch yourself. You look at your A320. That looks like your copying our 737. Obviously you are a complete failure because you cannot think for yourself.”
I think I have made my point clear.
Also, on the issue of usage of props: jets are good for higher speeds, props are for lower (In layman’s terms). I don’t think it is a requirement to go _really_ fast in a surveillance plane.
Osiris Fox
Thursday, September 22, 2011 at 2:14 PMGees… with a name like Gerald, no wonder you are so angry. Relax.