Chinese UAV/UCAV development

Good use for police and maritime surveillance. It could also be used for search and rescue and fighting forest fires.

delft said:

It is much to small to be modified from a manned helicopter and I do not remember a similar looking Chinese helicopter. It resembles an American small helicopter of half a century ago but with the technological developments since then and the difference in size the real connection will be slight.

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You are right. It was developed from the Brantly B-2 which was made by Brantly Helicopter Corporation and this helicopter first flew in 1953. Qingdao Haili Helicopters Co. Ltd bought over the company in 2007.

t2contra said:

You are right. It was developed from the Brantly B-2 which was made by Brantly Helicopter Corporation and this helicopter first flew in 1953. Qingdao Haili Helicopters Co. Ltd bought over the company in 2007.

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How interesting ! I must say I did not know about the American helicopter in the first place.

So the UAV was developed from a manned chopper after all. While the original manned design is hardly modern a workable UAV helicopter was still developed from it.

Way back in the early days of the maker the B2 got the US Army designation of YOH3 it never entered us military service. But the maker had some dreams for it including two scaled up versions the 305 a five seated that had very large limited success and a never to be ten seater tandom configuration (Think baby Chinook) the conversion of a ultra light chopper to a UAV has been proven before by the likes of the Fire Scout series. It will be interesting to see the next evolution of this system by The PRC. In the US the first generation fire scouts were also based on ultra light choppers the second generation moved up to a utility class. I wonder if the PLA might not try that with Z9 or another light utility model next.

t2contra said:

You are right. It was developed from the Brantly B-2 which was made by Brantly Helicopter Corporation and this helicopter first flew in 1953. Qingdao Haili Helicopters Co. Ltd bought over the company in 2007.

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OT
I recognised the shape but remembered of the name only the "B".

But why buy over a helicopter company with an antique design compared with a Robinson? Affordable, I suppose.

t2contra said:

But why buy over a helicopter company with an antique design compared with a Robinson? Affordable, I suppose.

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Affordable being one case, but with the financial prowess of China, I think she can buy over much more expensive companies if she wanted. However, most of the time, many sales are actually blocked by other nations, especially in the US, when they acknowledged that those products from that company would be used for military or are sensitive in nature. Unless the US trusted that the technology in those products are truly outdated (which in that case, China had no use of actually).

The Chinese maker is likely aiming this for wide scale production, that means they would need a reliable supply chain of Airframes. Robinson is a strong if small American maker. to get them the PRC would have needed to open a production line in China proper, as the main floor of production is Torrance, California, USA. to get Robinson to open a floor in china would demand either a buy out or convincing Robinson's owner that it was in there interests. Robinson Helicopter Co is still Owned by the Robinson Family. It's CEO is the son of it's founder and it's a stable builder so buy out is unlikely and convincing the ownership to open a floor in the PRC is also doubtful as it's more likely to cost more then the company makes.

Brantly International Inc.is already owned by Superior Aviation Beijing. the only manufacturing plant for there product is already in the PRC. The Current version is also not as dated as you might think. The B2 has been updated form time to time the current version is the Third generation the B2-B and to be frank helicopter technology in the conventional form more or less plateaued until Compound Helicopters and Tiltrotors enter production the most advanced Helicopters in the world are simply adding computer and automotive upgrades.

I think Robinson is the leader in civilian helicopter market share. Anyway, they are doing well and are in no need to be bought out.

I was reading that on Sept 16th China will have another UAV exhibition. Usually the UAV exhibitions that come out of China are interesting but the last two there didn't seem to be anything new. This upcoming one says there's going to be some new concepts revealed. One I was reading was called a Tornado. Not sure if these pics are PSed. Interesting if they were actually testing it with troops.