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]