Chinese Drone Drops 1.2 Tons of Cargo

The Chinese company Sichuan Tengden Sci-Tech has successfully tested a transport drone by parachuting 1.2 tons of cargo.

Sichuan media outlet reports on this.

The large unmanned aerial vehicle successfully passed the test at Lantian Airfield in Jigong, dropping three containers with a total weight of 1.2 tons from a height of 300 meters.

All the containers landed on parachutes within 100 meters of the target, which confirmed the possibility of using this drone in delivery missions in hard-to-reach regions.

The four-engine aircraft has a 20-meter wingspan, with a fuselage length and height of 10.5 meters and 3.1 meters, respectively. Its maximum takeoff weight is 4.35 tons, and its maximum payload is 1.2 tons.

When fully loaded, it can make an airdrop over a distance of more than 600 km, and the practical flight ceiling reaches 10,000 meters. It is capable of round-the-clock and all-weather use.

The unmanned aircraft features a modular cargo compartment design that can be quickly reconfigured for both regular cargo transportation and airdrop missions.

The developers did not disclose details about the control and navigation system, but the characteristic bulging fuselage element above the nose resembles a solution with a radio-transparent cap for the satellite communications antenna on high-altitude military-grade drones such as the MQ-9 and MQ-4.

The developers position their drone as a commercial product and a flexible tool for rescue operations. However, at the same time, it has significant potential in the military, where logistics on the battlefield is associated with a number of limitations and risks of losses.

A relatively small transport aircraft can be used in cooperation with airborne assault forces where conventional transport aircraft would suffer losses from enemy air defense systems.

Another obvious area of application for the drone could be aerial mining missions in water and land areas, as well as the delivery of strike drones.

However, the prototype from Sichuan Tengden Sci-Tech is only at the beginning of testing – it took only 34 days from the first flight to the test drop of cargo.