Armed turbojet plane probably makes more sense in peer-peer conflicts in comparison to predators-esq drones which are more useful for COIN operations due to lower operation costs, we may see more fancy drones from US now that they're committing to the pivot to Asia.
Ifri Ouzellaguen 06010
This is really cool! Long endurance solar drone, is this Chinese? Can I read more about it anywhere?AVIC Morning Star.
Having twin fuselages allows for greater wingspan and more room to mount solar panels, allowing for greater lift as well as endurance, range, and power.
Is this China's first foray into ultra long endurance/ pseudo-satellite UAVs? Current world record is held by airbus zephyr with 64 days of continuous flight time. Biggest challenge to overcome is the long wind span causing even mild wind to exert a massive amount of force on the frame. If successful it can become a powerful semi-permanent relay station/ISR platform.AVIC Morning Star.
Having twin fuselages allows for greater wingspan and more room to mount solar panels, allowing for greater lift as well as endurance, range, and power.
I think there's also a lot of potential in utilising dynamic soaring to extract energy for flight from any airspeed differential, including the inherent differential of being close to the ocean's surface. This method is how albatrosses are able to fly thousands of kilometres using barely any energy. A possible flight profile could be a more rugged framed solar aircraft sea-skimming for most of the day using barely any energy while charging its batteries, then as the day ends beginning a solar powered climb to maximum altitude, then slowly gliding down on battery power throughout the night until sunlight comes back. Another way of getting more energy is to use thermals and other wind differentials over land, something glider pilots have been doing for a long time and which could conceivably be automated with modern AI vision for terrain analysis. Even with current efficiency thin film solar cells and current density batteries, perpetual flight is possible, as in the physics checks out without needing a gossamer frame and no payload - if you can find a way to extract energy from atmospheric differentials to give your batteries time to charge during near-zero energy expenditure. Basically, if you get AI to utilise dynamic soaring, thermals etc, you can make a perpetual flight drone. If you can get more energy dense batteries and weight/space efficient solar cells, it just give you more payload capacity and ability to conduct tasks dynamically.
I think the main advantage of the high altitude is that once you get to a certain height, there just isn't that much wind to wreck the aircraft's day, once you're above the cloud layer, the UAV will get uninterrupted solar power until night time in which the batteries take over. Conversely for a lower flying solar UAV, it only takes one cloudy/stormy day to destroy solar panel efficiency and thus battery reserve, so it may be preferable to just avoid the fluctuation and go with purely high altitude to begin with. Higher altitude also enables longer range for ISR/Relay purposes.
No, this Morning Star is a "production version" of "Rainbow solar UAV" which was a prototype tested in 2017. It has been discussed back then. The two looks very close.
I can't estimate size well. Those look like ATGM sized munitions.Some screen captures of a video that I cannot locate. It shows weapons test from a WJ-700 UAV. The video also mentions an order worth ¥1 billion ($145 million) had been placed for the drone by a foreign customer.
