Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa has unveiled the country’s first domestically made unmanned aircraft system. It will help Quito fight drug traffic and will also be on sale in South America, costing “7 times less” than its Israeli equivalent.
“We have pleasant surprises… Whether you believe it or not, we are already producing unmanned aircraft,” Correa told the Ecuadorians, speaking on local television on Saturday.
The prototype UAS, called the UAV-2 Gavilán (“Hawk”), has been designed by the Ecuadorian Air Force (FAE) to monitor borders and hard-to-reach areas, like the Amazon rainforest, as well as for assisting investigations.
It took the FAE five years of research to create the unmanned surveillance aircraft, but the result proved to be quite a bargain. According to Correa, Gavilán’s cost is about $500,000, while in 2007 Quito had to buy six Israeli UAS of the same type for $20 million.
The Ecuadorian UAS is made of carbon fiber and wood, and operates on a gasoline engine for up to seven hours, the official news agency ANDES reported. It is capable of transmitting video and photos in real time and can land or take off automatically.
The UAS has already been tested in real missions, detecting a ship with “tons of drugs” in the Pacific last year, which it had followed six hours before the vessel was detained, Correa said.
The President said he “pressed” the Ecuadorian Air Force with the task of making a marketable model of the UAS, with the aim of exporting it “at least to Latin America.”
At least four more Gaviláns will be produced by Ecuador for domestic use this year, after which the FAE will switch to producing the UAS for export.
Photo: Miguel Ángel Romero/Presidencia de la República.
Source: Presidencia Ecuador