India’s RUSTOM-1 made its 14th successful flight on Tuesday morning at Kolar with attainment of about 11500 feet AGL (above ground level) and speed of above 140 Kmph during 2 hrs 10 minutes of cruise.
The aircraft was developed by Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE) a DRDO lab at Bangalore had its maiden flight in Nov’09. Mr. PS Krishnan, Director ADE stated that the flight was successful in so far as all the parameters were achieved by the 690 Kg UAS and the total performance was satisfactory.
The highlights of the flight are
- Use of lean mixture control system in the engine for flights at high altitudes
- Take-offweight being heaviest to date
- Achieved max altitude of 3.5 kms, about 11500 ft.
- Extended range of about 50 kms tried out for the first time.
- The waypoint track was perfect and so were take-off and landing etc.,
The aircraft has the potential to accomplish military missions like Reconnaissance & Surveillance, Target Acquisition, Target Designation, Communications Relay, Battle Damage Assessment and Signal Intelligence.
It can attain a maximum altitude of 22000 ft and endurance of 12-15 Hours with an operating range of 250 Kms when fully developed.
Source: DRDO Press Release