Modern warfare is increasingly fought remotely. Unmanned drones fly over hostile locations monitoring the situation, or even attacking key targets. Inevitably, the use of such drones is going to spread, and there will be a need to take out enemy drones. Until we have the scary situation of drones fighting drones, we have F-16 fighter pilots.
The video you see below is of a live fire exercise over the North Sea where a Danish F-16 shoots down a remote drone in mid-air. The missiles being used are heat-seeking and radar-guided AIM types. During the test the pilot used the AIM-9L Sidewinder, AIM-9X Sidewinder, and the AIM-120 AMRAAM.
The drone model is a Banshee 600 Maldrone developed by Meggitt Defence Systems in the UK. It’s meant to be a target practice drone, with a range of up to 100km and three engine configurations available. The F-16 blows this one up in a ball of flames, but they can be setup to be recovered for reuse depending on the exercise.
The test is an impressive display of accuracy when you consider how small the drone is compared to the size of a typical fighter jet. Here’s a close-up of the drone showing you how small it actually is while still on the ground in its catapult launcher
No comments:
Post a Comment