China’s saber-rattling is leading Taiwan to try out some unconventional means of defense.
A new suicide drone appeared at the August 2019 edition of the biennial Taipei Aerospace & Defense Technology Exhibition in the island country’s capital.
The unmanned aerial vehicle bears a strong resemblance to the small, hand-launched drones that are popular with U.S. forces. The other clearly draws inspiration from Israel’s Harpy anti-radar drone.
A suicide drone essentially is a small, inexpensive cruise missile, usually possessing some loitering capability. They might include a simple seeker head. Alternately, their operators remotely could steer them toward their targets.
Often based on commercial UAVs, suicide drones typically pack a small, grenade-size explosive warhead.
The Fire Cardinal drone, which first appeared at the Taipei trade show, is “an air-to-ground strike assault UAV,” according to the aviation-news website Alert 5, citing information from the show.
The twin-propeller Fire Cardinal is around four feet long, has a six-foot wingspan and weighs around 15 pounds. It includes an electro-optical and infrared sensor and selects its target using what Alert 5 described as an “intelligent object-detection system.”
Alert 5 did not speculate as to Fire Cardinal’s range, but it’s roughly the same size as the U.S. Army’s hand-launched Puma surveillance drone. The propeller-driven Puma can range as far as 10 miles at an altitude of 500 feet and a maximum speed of around 50 miles per hour.
A human operator controls a Puma via radio. It’s safe to assume the Fire Cardinal, with its own modest range and performance, features a similar control system. Ground troops in close proximity to enemy forces could lob many Fire Cardinals into the air in the hope of overwhelming the enemy’s short-range air defenses.
ARTICLE COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL INTEREST
