Russia steals the march of UAVs, Rostec develops world’s first UAV with air cushion speed of 100 KMPHLack of Legal norms
UAV, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, is not a new concept and researchers have been constantly working to improve the security and stability of the device. At one point of time Soviet Union used to design the world’s leading UAVs. However, of late Russian UAV was not living up to the mark of international standards. Russian military leaders have now set a goal of manufacturing at least 5% of the total global production of UAVs by 2022. Now, the United Instrument Manufacturing Corporation (UIMC) has proposed an Inter Agency Task Program for drone development. This program has been designed by the experts from federal executives bodies as well as research organizations and defense enterprises under the leadership of Concern Vega which is again a part of UIMC. With this program the Russian law enforcement agencies will receive drones of various classes and purposes by 2025. The program basically emphasizes on creating new, high-strength composite materials for glider drones. Rostec Corporation, a Russian Technology Group, which manufactures Russian naval equipments, has unveiled a prototype of the world’s first UAV with air cushion speed of 100 kilometers per hour. For now nothing much has been mentioned regarding this UAV. In April 2015, Rostec Corporation, a Russian Technology Group which manufactures Russian naval equipment, had made an announcement regarding its UAV which would weigh 3.8 kilogram and have a 2.4 meter wingspan which would also have speed of up to 90-100 kmph and an endurance ability of 1 to 1.5 hours. A prototype of this UAV was unveiled recently during the “Second International Conference for Unmanned Aerial 2015”. During the conference, Vladimir Kutahuofu (Vladimir Kutakhov), a spokesperson for Rostec, said that the concept was put forward in April and within a matter of just two and a half months the company was able to create a physical prototype. He further also mentioned that the total time required for production was only 31 hours and also added it cost them less than 20 million rubles to manufacture the prototype. Johnny Fay Du Ustinov (Denis Fedutinov), the chief expert of Russian unmanned aircraft systems and robotics further added that they used the ‘design automation technology‘ for developing the prototype and this helped them save a lot of time. Thus integrated use of various technology can definitely help in shortening the total manufacturing time of the prototype. The only disadvantage as of now is that these technologies are not mature enough to be implemented on a large scale.
Lack of Legal norms
In the present scenario, Israel is the global leader for manufacturing UAVs. Almost 80 percent of the country’s total production is exported to 49 countries of the world. Flytrex, an Israeli firm accepts and delivers parcels with the help of unmanned drones. By following the instructions given in the Flytrex Sky Messenger app one can easily get their parcels delivered to whichever place they want. Use of unmanned drones is still under controversies and few experts as well as researchers are against the use of such fully automated machines for domestic as well as military purposes. The UAV designed by Rostec would be used as “tactical reconnaissance drone” which would serve only the military purposes. However, the manufacturers feel that these drones could find its use in the civilian areas such as in the filed of agriculture, mines, can be used by the search and rescue teams, disaster management purposes such as floods, earthquakes, forest fire and many more. Vladimir Shcherbakov (Vladimir Shcherbakov), Deputy editor of the magazine “UAV.RU-Unmanned Aircraft”, which is an authoritative Russian information portal in the field of unmanned aircraft, feels Russia needs to expand the scope of UAV application. Due to lack of legal norms, domestic manufacturers of UAV have to face a lot of security issues. Currently the UAV finds its use in the field of surveillance system and he feels under the current scenario there is a very little scope for expansion of UAVs in the civilian areas. Large scale production of the UAVs too cannot solve the issue because as of now UAVs are not being used for domestic purposes on mass scale and hence it cannot even be exported to other countries. It was in June 2015, when the State Duma had for the first time accepted a bill regarding Drones and the bill did not allow to certify and register drones weighing less than 30 kg. The explanatory note to the bill mentioned : “The project is aimed at establishing the foundations for the formation of the legislative framework on the use of unmanned aircraft in the interests of the state, pilot and civil aviation, certification, state registration, admission and flight operations, airworthiness, requirements for aviation personnel, aviation safety and aviation security, accident investigation.” Russia along with other countries across the globe does not have any legislative framework to regulate the use of UAV. In October 2014, the company Copter Express was fined for delivering pizza by drone due to absence of appropriate license. Thus we can see that the issues regarding Drones have already entered the Russian legislation and very soon the Russian government is expected to get some solution for this. The Duma Transport Commission concludes that all the changes will definitely improve the overall level of aviation safety which would further help to build a better Russian defense and security and further also to set a proper legal basis for UAVs. Resource : Huanqui
