Russian army to fly foreign-made drones

The Russian army is learning to operate a batch of foreign-made unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) bought for familiarization purposes. The Defense Ministry in 2009 ordered several examples of two different UAV designs from Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). The original plan was to purchase systems in three different classes: the smallest Bird Eye 400, the medium I-View 150, and the larger Searcher MkII. It then transpired that the I-View 150 was soon to undergo upgrade, so the final choice was in favour of the other two types. The UAVs were delivered to Russia in 2010.

Until recently, the major portion of the Russian army’ s unmanned fleet — mostly old types by Tupolev Design Bureau — was concentrated at the 924th Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Units Personnel Combat Employment and Retraining Center in Yegoryevsk, Moscow Region.

After the signing of the contract with IAI the center started re-equipping with Israeli systems. The problem was that it had by then relocated to Kolomna and no longer had a runway suitable for Searcher MkII operations. So it was decided to station the larger UAVs at Kubinka airfield, home of the Russian Air Force’s Swifts and Russian Knights display teams. The training of operators for the new systems was also organized at Kubinka.
The upside of this decision was a good condition of the Kubinka runway and the airfield in general. But there was also a downside in the form of constant manned aircraft operations in the area, which caused amendments of the UAV flight schedule. As a result, operator training took longer than planned.