Berlin. With the Heron TP, the Bundeswehr now has an armed reconnaissance drone. One expert still sees a lot of room for improvement.
Given the extensive use of Drones at the Russian aggression war against Ukraine a specialist still sees a lot to do armed forces and its partners. “Very few armies in the world are prepared for such an eventuality,” Fabian Hinz of the IISS think tank in Berlin told the German Press Agency. “O armed forces We will certainly have problems too, simply because what we are seeing now in Ukraine, the massive use of small, commercially available drones, is a new experience.”
Heron TP reconnaissance drone can be equipped with missiles
Flight operations of the new reconnaissance drone that can be equipped with rockets Heron TP Hinz praised this as an important step. So far, the Bundeswehr has only used drones abroad. “Deployment in Germany is associated with certain bureaucratic hurdles that can be quite serious,” Hinz said. The fact that this has changed is an important milestone. But there is still a lot of room in principle.
“In principle, the big challenge is knowing what the lessons are,” said Hinz. Different systems were useful at different stages. “The rules for modern Drone warfare are only being written now. That’s why it’s very, very difficult to draw the right lessons from the war and anticipate what will happen in a few years and what threats we will face.”
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development overslept
Hinz criticized the fact that Germany ignored the events for a long time. Design is one of the first calls Suicide dronesthe anti-radar drone for use against enemy radar positions, late 1980s Dornier was developed. But it never went into production in Germany. “So design somehow goes its way Israel found. The Israelis then built these drones like the Harpy and developed them into the Harop.” The Iranians, in turn, copied the Harpy, expanded it and adapted the controls. “This then became Shahed-136.” This drone is also frequently used by Russian troops in Ukraine.
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“If Germany had continued on this path at that time, then of course it would be much, much further along now and would actually have very, very powerful weapons that it could also supply to its partners in Ukraine,” Hinz said. No truly usable products have emerged from further research.
“That is the fundamental problem. You have research, you have technological development and sometimes you have prototypes. But there just hasn’t been the political will behind it to translate the technology we have into a usable product.” The reason is the end of Cold War I have been. Back then, defense was considered a dirty business. “And drones are obviously much “dirtier” (dpa)
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