China's new drone exposed

There are divergent opinions on whether drones can updat traditional manned fighters and become the main force of the new generation of air forces. However, the most mainstream view is that drones are a very effective combat unit, but because of their many shortcomings, it is difficult to completely updat manned fighters within a certain period of time.

Those who hold this view also like to use China's most popular drone pterosaur 2 in the arms market as an example. They felt that Pterodactyl II was a very efficient combat unit. Its destructive capabilities, reconnaissance capabilities, formation bombing capabilities, and even air combat performance (especially UAV air combat) are impeccable. But two major flaws severely affected the performance of this drone.

One is poor protection. The protective capabilities here include all the shortcomings of this drone, such as its light weight, fragile structure, slow speed, low flight altitude, and poor maneuverability. Enemies can shoot them down this way. On the low-intensity battlefield, this defect is not so obvious. However, on high-intensity battlefields, the effects of drones may be very limited. only when living in air superiority can they play their maximum combat power, which can only have the icing on the cake.

The second drawback is the poor endurance, which cannot provide protection to the army for a long time. It's not just that the drone has a short flight time, but because the drone is light, it can usually only carry one to four missiles, and the firepower is poor. And the drone's flight distance depends on the communication radius. The communication radius is too low, which seriously affects the performance of the drone.

These two shortcomings have seriously affected the performance of the drone's combat effectiveness.

However, China recently revealed a new large-scale combat drone, which makes up for all of the above flaws. The name of this drone is the TB-1 drone.

First, the drone reached an altitude of seven kilometers. This height is not to mention an individual air defense missile, even medium-sized air defense and anti-missile missiles launched by vehicle platforms such as Hellfire missiles cannot hit it. In order to pose an effective threat to it, mosquitoes can only be hit with fighter jets or large anti-aircraft cannons such as beech and patriots. This means that the drone's survivability has been qualitatively improved.

Secondly, regarding the problem of poor battery life, this drone has also been solved. First it is equipped with a twin engine, and at the same time it is also equipped with a satellite data link. This allows this drone to reach a flight and effective communication radius of 3,000 kilometers. And operating within a range of 280 kilometers, this drone will not be shot down by enemy signal jamming weapons.

But the most important thing is the bomb load. This drone can be equipped with a payload of one thousand kilograms. If converted into the number of missiles, it can be equipped with 24 small missiles or directly with four heavy anti-ship missiles. The former can provide effective and sustained fire support to the Army. The latter can penetrate a main destroyer at once. Of course, if you do n’t think it ’s enough, you can carry heavy bombs directly, and directly BOOM the opposing fortifications.

If you think this is the limit of drone development, then you are wrong. Because of the development of this drone, Sichuan Tengdeng Technology Co., Ltd. has now gone further and further on the road of building large drones. They also plan to develop a drone that doubles the flight distance of TB-1, has a larger ammunition load, and has a higher flight altitude.

If pterosaurs represent the possibility of involving drones in air combat. Then TB-1 means the possibility of drones replacing fighters.