Ukrainian-Made Sirko Reconnaissance Drones Aim to Replace Mavic Quadcopters at Front
Drones are becoming an indispensable weapon in Ukraine’s fight to expel Russian invasion forces from its territory, with commercial, off-the-shelf quadcopters serving as eyes in the skies for Ukrainian front-line forces.
To end reliance on foreign-made drones, Ukraine is ramping up its own drone manufacturing base. Around 200 companies now make drones, but Ukraine needs just a few basic models to carry out tasks like reconnaissance in the war zone, the chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Skyassist Research and Production Company LLC, Ihor Krynychko said in an interview with Radio NV on Aug. 4.
"Every aircraft has its purpose," Krynychko said.
"On the one hand, these opportunity zones overlap with each other. However, speaking about Mavics or other quadcopters, they have their own physics of flight. I mean these aircraft can hover in the air. This is what primarily differs them from plane-type drones."
Skyassist is now setting up mass production of another kind of drone, Sirko, which is a fixed-wing UAV that has its own niche on the battlefield.
"We need to realize that the full replacement isn't possible at all,” Krynychko told NV.
“The main purpose of quadcopters is to watch a 300-meter-wide area near the frontline,” he said.
“They hover in the air and monitor the situation. In aircraft-type drones (like Sirko) lift is generated by the flow of the wing. So, it can sometimes replace a plane, sometimes a quadcopter. … A quadcopter is (like) a balloon from World War I, when it took off and a guy with a spyglass was watching the enemy from above.”
While unable to hover, Sirko is a first-class reconnaissance drone, which can also serve as a fire adjuster, Krynychko said. Moreover, its simple design means it’s easy to mass produce – and Ukraine needs masses of drones, perhaps in the tens of thousands.
"It's easy to mass produce, besides it has a very interesting design which is plain and simple,” Krynychko said.
“It's a mechanism 92 centimeters in size. It's a monoplane. There is no need to fold or unfold it to prepare it for combat actions or evacuation. It's very easy to use. It is launched with a rubber band exclusively and works mostly automatically. However, we left the option of manual control during flight. An operator can order a drone to fly to the right, or to the left, or in any other desired direction. But mechanism automatically chooses the angle to turn at. It's called stabilized flight.”
The distance between an operator and a drone can reach up to 30 km, he added.
The new Kharkiv-made Sirko drone was first unveiled in May 2023.
Photo: Sirko reconnaissance drone - armyinform.com.ua
Source: The New Voice of Ukraine
