That’s not all that many users. Is that the maximum capacity of the base station, or are they maybe limiting access to emergency services and military personnel with passcodes and that’s how many such people connected in the disaster area?
This appears to be a different model developed by AVIC called Y-5U and the previous one was developed by CASC called FH-98. I guess the claim of the largest general-purpose UAV is still true if it is exactly the same size as the previous record holder. But just seems to be less impressive now.
I think that shall not be any problem. The unmanned Y5-U and FH-98 are both derivative of Y5 light transport that is still in PLAAF service for paratrooper parachute jumping training.
According to the message from China Mobile, one of the major telecom service provider, it read as follwing:-
It is refreshing to see one of these long-endurance UCAVs used for something that's not bombing related.
32 hours is somewhat of a misleading figure. From a flight planning perspective one has to take into account the altitude in which the loitering occurs because the lower the altitude, the higher the fuel burn.... and vice versa. I imagine the WL2 would have to fly lower than optimum cruising altitude in order to provide signal to ground equipment, and therefore it'll burn significantly more fuel as compared to cruising at optimum altitude (probably around 25,000 to 30,000 feet) that might give the 32 hours stated on Wiki. I'm basing this assumption purely from my own experience where I "forget" to turn off airplane mode on my phone, and my notifications start kicking off once descending through ~10,000 feet because it starts receiving signal from cell towers on the ground. 32 hours is also derived from flying at optimum cruise altitude but at maximum endurance speed (in other words, that's hella slow), I'm sure the drone operators won't be flying from Guizhou to Henan at such low speeds when they're trying to save lives.