Luftwaffe A400M delivers replacement Heron from Israel to Afghanistan

[Test7]

Replacement Heron 1 for Afghanistan​

An A400M of the Air Force brought a Heron-1 drone from Ben Gurion Airport to Mazar-i-Sharif on Saturday night. This means that two aircraft are available again.

The new Heron 1 is the replacement for a machine that was supported on March 5th. "At 04:45 am CET, a Heron 1 crashed in a controlled manner in an open area 40 km east of Mazar-i Sharif. The suspected cause is a technical defect," it said at the time. The safety-relevant material was recovered from the crash site by German forces and the aircraft was made unusable.

A Heron 1 was previously lost in Afghanistan on November 16, 2020. Thomas Silberhorn, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Minister of Defense, said in the Bundestag "According to our knowledge so far, there was an engine failure. The distance from the Mazar-i-Sharif location was too far to be able to return the drone. That is why an emergency landing site was sought and also identified with the help of maps and the drone's on-board camera. This drone was then landed in uninhabited areas in order to rule out possible risks to third parties.

The Heron 1 are rented by the German Armed Forces and looked after on site by Airbus Defense and Space Airborne Solutions GmbH. In principle, the Heron 1 will take off and land, as contractually agreed, by the pilots of the civil contract partner. After take-off, the aircraft is handed over at a height of 300 meters above ground. The mission flight itself is then carried out by soldiers or pilots from the German Resolute Support contingent. Before the landing approach, there is again a return to the civil contract partner.

At that time, the Ministry of Defense also said that "the use of currently only 2 aircraft is currently assessed as sufficient from an operational point of view". "Since the German mission contingent RS (Resolute Support) has ended its permanent presence in Kunduz, this area no longer needs to be cleared up as extensively as before and are currently guaranteed by using other educational means "

The Heron 1 have completed over 50,000 flight hours in Afghanistan since April 2002. The system is to be replaced by Heron TP "from mid-2021".

A400M der Luftwaffe holt UAV in Israel ab: Ersatz-Heron 1 für Afghanistan

Eine A400M der Luftwaffe hat in der Nacht von Samstag auf Sonntag ein Heron-1-Drohne vom Flughafen Ben Gurion nach Masar-i-Scharif gebracht. Damit stehen wieder zwei Fluggeräte zur Verfügung.

www.flugrevue.de