Chinese UAV/UCAV development

[Temstar]

This is just a demo with a quad, imagine this same tech scaled up being used on one of those Five Cloud UAV:

This thing could then stay airborne over Chinese airspace indefinitely. There would be many interesting applications.

 

[by78]

A nice magazine scan.

 

[by78]

This is just a demo with a quad, imagine this same tech scaled up being used on one of those Five Cloud UAV:
View attachment 104176
This thing could then stay airborne over Chinese airspace indefinitely. There would be many interesting applications.

This is interesting. Apparently this is a combination of a stratospheric aerostat and a UAV. I assume the UAV dangling from the aerostat provides the propulsion, while the solar panels on the aerostat provides power to the UAV. According to

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from 2018, they have already completed the development of a prototype aerostat.

 

[kurutoga]

Aren't you literally blasting the drone with a beam of energy? It will be magnitudes higher power than communication since it needs to transmit power, any leakage will be easily picked up.

A 1kW laser will be enough to power a small drone, assuming energy conversion rate is say, 20%. That is 200W power. Most consumer quad drones are like 100-200W

 

[Temstar]

This is interesting. Apparently this is a combination of a stratospheric aerostat and a UAV. I assume the UAV dangling from the aerostat provides the propulsion, while the solar panels on the aerostat provides power to the UAV. According to

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

from 2018, they have already completed the development of a prototype aerostat.

Yes the prototype already flew:

The way I heard it, the disk shaped thing isn't actually filled with lighter than air gas but rather regular air. Lift is generated by the drone underneath tugging on the disk which act as an airfoil, it can then float around in stratosphere for month at a time.

 

[Strangelove]

From the japanese...

 

[siegecrossbow]

From the japanese...

View attachment 104190View attachment 104191

That's the advantage with operating F-15. F-18E/F's operational ceiling is too low to catching WZ-7 at the height it is flying.

 

[by78]

WZ-7. This is a high-resolution version of a previously shared image.

 

[by78]

Nice images of WZ-9 and WZ-10 from the last Zhuhai airshow.

 

[by78]