et engines are not cheap. Then there are two of them here. Couldn’t they find a single engine to fly 120kg to ~350km away at 500km/hr?
I wonder which jet engines they will use to propel this kamikaze UAV?
I wondered about that, too. It is a weird choice to have two smaller engines instead of one. Those two engines together must be cheaper than an engine of equal thrust, or, since it is MKE, they are just "doing a favour" to whatever company is making them.
25k of explosives is not too bad. But then it is about the explosive content in 4 x 155mm artillery shells. This UAV doesn’t look like having a stealthy geometry. Hence susceptible to being intercepted by AD systems quite easily.
I don't know about that mate, Shaheds/Gerans (I'm using this as an example because can't think of something more similar right now) have been the bane of Ukraine's air defences and they aren't exactly stealth either; biggest difference being the delta wing Gerans have, on the other hand, they also have propellers. This would be much better with delta wings as well I wish they had gone for that, but, at least its engines are sticking out like sore thumbs. If the body is made from composites, it would be another point in its favour, but I kinda doubt that. Also, this thing is small, like really small that would also make it harder to detect, I think.
Best defence against these drones have been AA cannons, according to Ukrainians, so this thing being more than twice as fast would be an advantage. Even if it is intercepted, I think it would force them to waste an AA missile on it, rather than getting shot down by AA cannons. So, it would be costly for an enemy to shoot it down. And since it is fast, and in all likelihood quite a bit cheaper than a cruise missile, it could be shot alongside them to overwhelm/confuse enemy AA.
It is supposed to fly autonomously via visual odometric means to its target without GPS. If that means a form of IIR seeker head in action, again that is expensive.
I didn't see anything resembling an IIR seeker in the video, and they are usually at the front end, right? This thing doesn't look like it has the space for it there. I think it is more likely they are doing it with a camera setup, something like 2 or 3 lenses feeding information to onboard computer? Those wouldn't be hard to embed in the body, hence why we can't see anything in the video.
All of that to convey 25kg of explosives over such a long distance. Would it be worth it?
By itself? Maybe not, but as a part of a aerial assault with other missiles? I think it would be. Check out this drone next to that guy in the video. This thing is small, we could possibly launch, I don't know, a dozen or more of this from a truck, alongside (let's say) Kara Atmaca against a target stationary target. I think that has a lot of potential, as it has been really effective for Russia and they are going up against almost all of the Western air defences every day.
This is all speculation on my part, of course. We simply need more information and knowing how slow our companies are at updating their websites, we probably won't see detailed information any time soon.
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