New unmanned systems for the Russian military

The Russian Defense Ministry is actively seeking to equip the national armed forces with indigenous unmanned aerial systems (UAS). The ministry ran a set of comparative trials a few years ago on several short- to medium-range UAS vehicles. Subsequently, the Orlan UAS family by St. Petersburg-based Special Technology Center, and the Eleron family developed by the Kazan-based Enics company, successfully passed official tests and may be now procured in small amounts by the Russian military.

The availability of larger indigenous unmanned systems is more of an issue. The Defense Ministry had to fund the relevant development efforts. As a result, a host of R&D projects in this field have been launched recently in the interests of the Russian military.

Rumour has it that Vega Radio Engineering Corporation is developing a new tactical UAS, but no open-source information is available as to the current program status or the system’s characteristics.

Larger, greater-endurance UAS are understood to be under development at Transas in St Petersburg and at the Sokol design bureau in Kazan. These systems will have around 1 t and 5 t MTOW, respectively. Other than that, there is as yet no official information about either program. We may assume that, seeing as the two vehicles’ dimensions are going to be comparable in size to the US Predator and Reaper systems, their functionality and performance will also be similar.