Geran-4 Fitted with a New Shaped-Charge Warhead for Severing Power Transmission Lines

New shaped-charge cutting warheads have reportedly begun to be installed on the Geran-4 jet-powered drones.

Defence Express published a photograph of a drone fitted with the new warhead.

The warhead is intended to engage power transmission lines.

The new warhead consists of a main charge weighing approximately 40 kg and four additional cutting charges. The linear shaped charges are arranged in a structure resembling a revolver cylinder.

Detonation can be triggered by additional contact sensors, so-called “whiskers”, mounted on the drone.

During a close pass, the “whiskers” are intended to activate the warhead’s linear shaped charges.

“It is a conventional mechanical fuze. Inside, there is a metal tube and a metal rod that come into electrical contact upon impact with an object, closing the circuit and initiating the detonation,” Serhii Flesh wrote.

Geran-4

According to open-source information, the Geran-4 is a further development of the Geran-3 jet-powered unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), featuring a fuselage better optimized for high-speed flight and a more powerful engine.

The Geran-4 UAV has a wingspan of approximately 3 meters and a length of 3.5 meters, similar to the previous version. However, the aircraft’s takeoff weight has increased from 350 to 450 kilograms.

The drone is powered by a turbojet engine with a thrust rating of 160 kgf, which is twice the thrust of the Chinese Telefly JT80 turbojet engine used by its predecessor.

This increased the cruise speed from 280–330 km/h to 350–500 km/h while extending the flight range from 600 to 850 km.

The flight altitude ranges from 100 to 5,000 meters, the endurance is approximately 2.5 hours, and the warhead mass is 50 kg or more.