Gennady Trubnikov, chief designer of the St. Petersburg company "Kronstadt-Technologies", giving an interview to journalists at an exhibition of unmanned aircraft in Moscow, said that "the drones produced by the Kronstadt-Technologies company are better than the Israeli ones, which are planned to be assembled in Russia. The main thing is the price of the issue, it is for this indicator that our products are several times cheaper, while both our and Israeli drones have both positive and negative sides."
He also listed the technical advantages of Russian UAVs, first of all naming such a parameter as the duration of the flight. The Dozor-100 UAV can fly for 10 hours, its Israeli counterparts Searcher or Bird Eye for up to 6 hours. "Our drone can fly twice over the territory of Israel and return twice," said the designer. In addition, Trubnikov noted, the developers of Dozor-100, when creating it, proceeded from temperature regimes from -50 to +40 degrees. Trubnikov also added that image processing is taking place on board our Dozor-100. "Unlike the transmitted video picture, they also have photographic material, that is, image processing in both video and photo mode. Moreover, the photographic material allows you to get an electronic map with the ability to take coordinates and issue target designation in real time," the designer said.
But at the same time, he admits that Russian manufacturers are still lagging behind Israeli ones in the quality of transmission lines and optical-thermal imaging heads. "In this they are indisputably better, in this we are lagging behind. Plus, they have very extensive experience in using UAVs in practice, in particular, they have flown more than 500 thousand hours. Such a flight time suggests that they have a well-developed method of application," he said. constructor. He stressed that such a large practice of using, first of all, is associated with the use of UAVs in the fight against terrorists in Israel itself, as well as with their use in military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. "This is combat experience, and we have not used our drones anywhere. It takes time for the task to be set, and we would work out the application method," Trubnikov said.
The price of Dozora-100, amounting to about a million dollars, is comparable to the Israeli Bird Eye 400, but the Israeli UAV belongs to a lower class.
According to IzRus, on October 12, 2010, Yitzhak Nisan, general director of the Israeli concern Israel Aerospace Industries, signed an agreement with representatives of the Russian state company Rosoboronprom on the supply of a batch of UAVs worth $ 400 million. Israeli drones will be delivered to the Russian Federation unassembled and assembled at the Kazan Helicopter Plant.
