Russia has received five foreign applications for Orion-E attack unmanned aerial vehicles armed with Whirlwind-M missiles.
A source in the military-industrial complex reported this to RIA Novosti. These are customers from near and far abroad. A little earlier, the St. Petersburg company Kronstadt, which develops drones, announced that they had completed ground testing of the Orions with the Whirlwind missiles. Now flight tests with firing from the UAV are planned.
RG wrote that Orion drones, which are purchased by foreign customers, will be able to operate through foreign satellites. And satellite communications have already been tested using the orbital frequency resource of several spacecraft in geostationary orbit, when the onboard antenna on the drone and ground control point is sent to the satellite, and the necessary information, control commands, and telemetry are transmitted through it.
Orion is a medium-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle with a long flight duration. Its take-off weight is 1,150 kilograms, cruising speed is 200 kilometers per hour, it can take off seven kilometers into the air. The Whirlwind rocket was created in the Kalashnikov Group of companies. It is able to penetrate homogeneous armor with a thickness of 750 millimeters behind dynamic protection.
Svetlana Tsygankova
