Here is the write up from Henri K about this mysterious company that come from nowhere and can built the UAV sofast. Turn out this company is founder is well known aerodynamicist with backing of provincial SOE. they are based in Chengdu the new hub of aerodynamic in China As I said the future of Chinese defense industry lay in the participation of the private company. It will unleash torrent of creativity and ingenuity you ain't see yet
Tengden (腾 盾 科技), a Chinese company founded in January 2016 and still little known until then, has made itself known recently thanks to the successful inaugural flight of its first drone called
TB001 , which becomes one of the largest drones High Altitude-Long Endurance (HALE) of the country.
Already at the last China-ASEAN Exposition Exhibition (CAEXPO) which took place in Guizhou in mid-September, the young Chinese thumb hit hard by revealing its four different drones at one time - the HALE TB001, the MALE
TA001 and two helicopter drones
HA001 and
HB001.
The presentation of the Tengden drones at CAEXPO 2017 (Photo: 910 大熊)
The Tengden team (Photo: 赵 雷)
The drone TB001 "Double tail scorpion" (Photo: 赵 雷)
The "TB001" is named "Scorpio with double tail", a nickname derived from that of a famous bandit who appeared in the novel "
Au bord de l'eau ", which is one of the four classic novels of early Chinese literature. large size Chinese drone with two engines and also two generators on board.
In a twin-wing configuration with high wings, this new Chinese drone is 10 meters long, 3.3 meters high, and has a large span of 20 meters. Its MTOW of 2,800 kg allows it to embark nearly a ton of payloads.
According to the manufacturer's figures, the drone is able to reach an altitude of 8,000 meters and fly at a speed of 260 km / h. Its autonomy is 6 000 km or 35 hours in flight.
The drone is controlled either by a LOS link within a radius of 280 km, or by a satellite link over a distance of more than 3 000 km.
Tengden says that three prototypes of TB001 have been built so far.
On Tuesday, September 26, just two weeks after his first public appearance, the double-tail Scorpion successfully completed its inaugural flight that lasted a little thirty minutes.
The location of this first flight test was not reported but it is the Taipingsi military airport in Chengdu, not far from the Tengden site.
Officially, the private company plans to offer its HALE drone for civilian missions such as environmental monitoring, geological surveys, mapping, pipeline inspection, atmospheric research or even sports photography.
But the military ambition is also clearly displayed by Tengden since the TB001 is mainly presented to CAEXPO with a panoply of Air-Sol ammunition, notably the guided bombs of the family FT designed by the Chinese aerospace group CASC.
This is also the case for the other three Tengden drone models, all of which were exposed with weapons.