China bag the biggest export order sofar for UAV I billion US $ for 300 UAV a tidy sum to fund even more sophisticated UAV. I can see UAVis replacing conventional plane for CAS or ground pounding
They need to improve the engine efficiency or buy ROTAX company
It is known that the new Chinese armed drone
Wing Loong II has already found a foreign buyer before
, which took place on February 27 this year. It is also known that this new client of Wing Loong II is none other than Saudi Arabia, which has already procured the previous version,
Wing Loong I , since 2014, most of which has already made missions Recognition and striking in Yemen. We also know and especially that the Chinese aircraft group AVIC talks about the biggest contract of drones ever signed in China.
But what we do not know is the amount of the contract and its content.
The rumor circulated for several months on the figure of 300 Chinese drones bought by the Saudi army. A few days ago the "rough" amount of a billion greenback for this contract also surfaced. Assuming that these rumors are all well founded, we can then ask ourselves the question whether the figure of 300 drones relates totally to the Wing Loong II.
The Wing Loong II drone during its inaugural flight on February 27, 2017.
The drone Wing Loong II with its chief engineer (Photos: AVIC)
By simply dividing one billion US dollars by 300, each drone in question costs only $ 3 million, ground equipment and services included, knowing that a Wing Loong I already costs more than a million dollars.
For a drone like the Wing Loong II, this very "friendly" price seems anomally low, even for "Made in China". For another drone of the same size, with a MTOW exceeding 4,000 kg (4,200 for the Wing Loong II and 4,540 for the American MQ-9), its flyaway price (excluding support) amounts to a little more Of $ 22 million for the 361 drones acquired by the US military between 2002 and 2039,
to
.
And precisely with respect to the quantity ordered, 300 drones in the Wing Loop II / Reaper category for the Saudi Arabian seem to be oversized in relation to their actual needs, although we do not have a precise model to quantify these.
The assumption we are making today is that the contract signed between Saudi Arabia and China includes not one but two types of drones, in addition to ground facilities, ammunition and standard services.
Always going for the 300 aircraft and a flyaway price of 3 million USD for a Wing Loong I and 8 million for a Wing Loong II, we get the figures of 233 UAVs version I and 67 for version II .
This distribution of 1: 3 for the two versions of Wing Loong seems to us much more likely in the case of a gradual and controlled increase of the Saudi air force, in armed drone. Of course, this hypothesis does not take into account any local production of drones, knowing that the Kingdom has already contracted with another Chinese group, the CCAC, for
.
We will come back to this in the near future on the production capacity of the AVIC group, in particular Chengdu (CAC) and Guizhou (GAIC), to honor this 300 drones contract over time.
But in the meantime, the "proliferation" of Chinese drones in the Middle East and the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and China in the military field are already two very interesting subjects to follow.
Henri K.