The Georgian Ministry of Defence has produced a video [below] of President Mikheil Saakashvili unveiling Georgia’s first domestically produced unmanned aircraft.
The aircraft is designed for reconnaissance and surveillance, with a photo and infrared camera, and Saakashvili said that it being home-grown means that “no one will share this with others,” apparently referring to an embarrassing episode with previous UAS that Georgia bought from Israel. After selling the UAS to Georgia, Israel reportedly gave Russia data link codes that allowed the Russians to hack into the Georgian UAS. The Georgian government hasn’t publicly confirmed those reports, but Saakashvili surely had them in mind when speaking at the aircraft’s launch, reports Civil.ge:
“When you make procurement from abroad a seller may not give you a full technology or may share technology [bought] by you to your adversary,” Saakashvili said at a presentation. “No one will share this [pointing to the Georgian-made aircraft] with others; it’s ours… We no longer depend on others.” The aircraft can fly for eight hours, reach an altitude of 3,000 meters and reach a top speed of 160 km/hour, Georgia says.
“This does look like a new UAS, but one thing’s for sure: they had some help or got [the technology] from an advanced nation. That’s pretty a sophisticated design for any country, especially if it’ll do what they say it will, and looks nothing like any other CIS-area products. There are two countries that build airplanes that look like that — Israel and the US… I’d be very interested to find where their payload camera comes from, where the engine comes from and who builds the catapult. Those are things which can be built domestically, but often aren’t. Other countries that ‘build their own’ UAS often get that equipment from the actual country of origin, since it’s a real pain to design new ones.” said an expert.
Georgia just recently settled a lawsuit with the Israeli company Elbit over unmanned aircraft that Georgia bought in 2007. Very little about that lawsuit has been made public, and who knows what sort of technology has been acquired from Israel.
Source: Euroasianet