Moscow. July 9. INTERFAX-The Hunter drone (UAV) continues testing, it will have a large combat radius, Vladimir Artyakov, first Deputy General Director of Rostec, said on Friday.
"The Sukhoi Design Bureau is working on a heavy S-70 Hunter drone. Now this machine is being tested. For obvious reasons, I can't tell you much about this project. I will only note that the UAV will surpass foreign analogues in a number of characteristics, " Artyakov said in an interview with the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper"
"It has a larger combat radius and wider functionality. The Hunter will be able to interact with other aircraft, in particular with the Su-57, to jointly use new tactics and the capabilities of artificial intelligence elements, " Artyakov said.
Serial deliveries of Hunter attack drones to the troops will begin from 2024, First Deputy Chairman of the Board of the Military-Industrial Commission (MIC) of Russia Andrey Yelchaninov said earlier in an interview with Interfax.
"The drone has shown its performance, it is being tested. What is flying now is a technology demonstrator and a prototype of a drone that should be delivered to the troops from 2024, " Yelchaninov said.
According to him, serial purchases of the Hunter will be included in the next state armament program for 2024-2033, which both the Ministry of Defense and the board of the Military-Industrial Complex of the Russian Federation are already working on.
Yelchaninov noted that during the joint tests of the Hunter with the fifth-generation Su - 57 fighter, the mutual transfer of information between the aircraft is being worked out-the redistribution of targets in flight, maintaining intervals and distances, performing anti-missile maneuvers.
In the future, the pilot of the Su-57 fighter will be able to distribute tasks in a group of drones and organize the work of the so-called "swarm" using artificial intelligence, according to the first deputy chairman of the board of the Military-Industrial Complex of the Russian Federation.
"This is one of the possible images that potentially suggests that human life is always higher and more expensive. And the possibility of one human brain is much higher than the totality of a set of computing machines, " Yelchaninov said.
As Interfax reported, the Sukhoi company is working on the creation of Russia's first heavy attack drone of long flight duration - the S-70 "Hunter". On August 3, 2019, he took to the sky for the first time.
According to open data, its take-off weight is 20 tons, which makes it the heaviest of the currently developed drones. The dimensions of the Hunter (length-19 m, wingspan-14 m) are comparable to the parameters of the Su-57. Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the combat load of the Hunter is 6 tons, the flight range is about 6 thousand km, and the altitude is 18 km.
