Moscow. January 27. INTERFAX - Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu was presented with the first flight model of the Orion drone with satellite communications at a special plant in Dubna near Moscow on Thursday, the military department told reporters.
"Representatives of the Kronstadt company presented to the Minister of Defense the first flight model of the Orion reconnaissance and strike drone with a satellite communications antenna," the report said.
Shoigu on Thursday inspected the first Russian specialized plant for the production of large-sized drones and checked its production.
The satellite communication unit allows you to significantly increase the range of use of the device, since it will be able to operate outside the direct radio visibility zone of the ground control point.
The Defense Ministry added that within the framework of the promising programs of the Kronstadt company, the head of the military department was informed about the new Sirius unmanned complex contracted by the ministry, the Helios-RLD radar patrol UAV, and the Thunder high-speed strike drone.
Denis Manturov, the head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, and Andrey Vorobyov, the Governor of the Moscow Region, also got acquainted with the new production.
At the end of last year, the Kronstadt company announced the completion of the construction of a plant in Dubna near Moscow for the serial production of large-scale unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), including shock. At the same time, the assembly of the first drones began.
The construction of the first aviation plant in post-Soviet Russia took place from April to December 2021. He additionally created more than 1.5 thousand jobs in the region.
The Center for the production of large-size aircraft and helicopter-type UAVs built in Dubna is a single industrial site with an area of over 50 hectares. The main production workshops of Kronstadt and the Dubna Machine-Building Plant named after Fedorov, which is part of it, are located here.
Kronstadt Group develops and manufactures unmanned aircraft systems and target loads for them, as well as on-board equipment. In particular, the reconnaissance and strike Orion (experimental design work "Pacer"), serially supplied to the Russian military and its export version "Orion-E".
In addition, the company is creating the next modification of the Orion - a long-duration reconnaissance and strike UAV Sirius - due to the increase in the size and mass of the payload, its combat effectiveness will also increase significantly. In August 2021, the Russian Defense Ministry signed a contract for the supply of five complexes with Sirius drones ("Inokhodets-RU").
