Russia’s Predator Drone Goofily Crashes and Explodes

Πηγή: Gizmodo
BY SAM BIDDLE

Sep. 21 2011

First China tried to clone the Predator, and it went kablooey in the woods. Now new footage shows that Russia's Predator counterpart met an equally unflattering fate: a wobbly takeoff followed by a very messy explosion.

Flightglobal explains this crash is likely the reason Russia, a giant, sophisticated military power, oddly doesn't have any UAV chips on the table at all—after a failure this spectacular in 2010, it was back to the drawing board. But I'm sure the drawing board has been busy; with countries like the US feeding an increasing amount of its killing-people-activity through armed drones, no major military is going to want to sit on the ground and gaze up, pouting. Little tip to Russia: try a better name than the "Stork" next time. Y'know, just might inspire a little extra engineering confidence.