Air-Force Bundeswehr again loses Heron drone in the Hindu Kush

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The German Armed Forces lost an unarmed Heron reconnaissance drone while on duty in Afghanistan . The unmanned flight system went down east of Mazar-e-Sharif, announced the command and control of the Bundeswehr. The reason is probably a technical defect, people were not harmed.

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On returning from a reconnaissance flight, the Heron made an emergency landing on Monday morning (today) 20 minutes before landing in Mazar-e-Sharif. In contrast to a crash, the pilot had the drone under control and was still able to control this emergency landing, explained a Bundeswehr spokesman.

Although the Heron went down in rough terrain, soldiers from the NATO-led Resolute Support Mission were able to recover parts of the drone. According to the Bundeswehr, material that could not be recovered was destroyed - a paraphrase for the fact that the machine is presumably a total loss.

The Bundeswehr had three of the Israeli reconnaissance drones in use in Afghanistan, so now two that were leased and - with the exception of the actual military use in reconnaissance and surveillance flights - are operated by Airbus.

It is at least the fourth loss of a Heron drone in the Bundeswehr mission in the Hindu Kush; the previous cases:

• March 17th, 201o: Due to an operating error, a Heron that has already landed crashes into a parked Transall on the ground, the unmanned flight system is a total loss.

• December 19, 2010: The aircraft got out of control almost 70 kilometers west of Kunduz and crashed. The cause was probably an engine failure due to oil loss.

A day later, Bundeswehr specialists tried together with a US Army Chinook helicopter to recover this crashed drone. The transport helicopter almost crashed; the remains of the Heron were destroyed by fire from an Apache attack helicopter, as the Bundeswehr contingent reported:

The UAV could not be returned because the attempt to transport it as an external load resulted in another crash because the UAV produced too much lift even though the outer wing surfaces had already been removed. For this reason, only the now very badly damaged engine could be salvaged. The remains of the UAV were then destroyed with an LFK and on-board cannon (BMK) of an AH 64.

• November 8, 2013: After the connection to the ground station was broken, a Heron crashed into a mountain in Badakshan province east of Mazar-e-Sharif; salvage of the rubble was not considered due to the geographical conditions at the crash site and the condition of the drone.

 
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