Belarusian Emergencies Ministry to get long-range UAV in 2015

In 2015 the Belarusian Emergencies Ministry will get an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with the operational range of up to 290km. The information was released by Yuri Yatsyna, head of the R&D center for UAV technologies of the Physics Technology Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, at the press conference held on 10 February to discuss innovative technologies for unmanned aerial vehicles, BelTA has learned.

Yuri Yatsyna explained: “This year our latest product — an unmanned aerial vehicle Burevestnik with the operational range of up to 290km — will be supplied to the Emergencies Ministry. Apart from that, starting this year we will prepare such systems for batch production”.

In his words, the drone can stay in the air for up to ten hours as high as 5,000m. It can fly as fast as 120kmph in the deployment area. The UAV can be used for recon missions, for detecting emergencies and assessing their development, for monitoring agricultural crops. It will be possible to use the system later to monitor radiation status in the area of the construction site of the Belarusian nuclear power plant. The data will be fed in real time, noted the head of the Belarusian R&D center for UAV technologies.

The R&D center for UAV technologies was created in 2011 as part of the program for the innovation-driven development of Belarus. The first phase of the facility to make small-range unmanned aerial vehicles was commissioned in 2012. The second phase of the facility to make UAVs with the operational range of up to 290km will be commissioned this year, said Yuri Yatsyna. The facility can make more than ten small-range UAVs per annum. Once the second phase of the facility is commissioned, it will be able to also make from five to ten long-range UAVs per annum.

The R&D center for UAV technologies of the Physics Technology Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus is the CIS only enterprise certified to batch produce unmanned aerial vehicles of its own design. The center can develop and batch produce several kinds of merchandise, including compact unmanned aerial vehicles with the operational range of 25km and 50km, an environmental monitoring UAV based on a dirigible, the Burevestnik UAV as well as photosystems for UAVs and automatic control systems.