Russian Orion Drone Destroys New Unmanned Target Helicopters in Latest Tests

Russia’s Orion drone fired latest munitions to destroy new unmanned target helicopters built by Rostec-owned company Tekhnodinamika Holding.

The next batch of helicopter simulators will be delivered to the Aerospace Forces in early 2022.

The Orion, in the absence of other air defense systems identified and destroyed the helicopter which broke into the military airfield during the tests, Rostec said in a release today.

An aerial target-simulator of a helicopter (VM-V) is a part of a complex with unmanned aerial vehicles - a simulator of air targets, developed and created at TsNTU "Dinamika". The helicopter is capable of staying in the air for at least 2 hours, reaching a maximum altitude of 2.5 km. The maximum range of its radio communication is 150 km. The drone is intended for use as a target simulator of a target when creating a target environment using target equipment during testing.

The company is further improving the flight performance of unmanned helicopters, installing additional equipment on them, increasing the payload, range and duration of the flight.

In October 2020, a complex with unmanned aerial vehicles that has no analogues in Russia - a simulator of air targets successfully passed state tests, the final stage of which was carried out in the proving grounds of the GLITs of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation named after I. V.P. Chkalov using the target equipment. At the end of 2020, the first production batch of the complex was handed over to the customer. 

In October of this year, unmanned helicopters of TsNTU "Dinamika" were used for the first time to simulate an air raid of a simulated enemy during the Russian-Serbian exercises "Slavic Shield - 2021". The drones served as targets for the Pantsir-S anti-aircraft missile and cannon systems.