the other day i was thinking about how turkey downed Syrian su-22 allegedly outside of AMRAAM's no escape zone range. i was thinking we know that the owj-j-85 engine which we are producing is not that powerful for a manned aircraft. so what if we make a drone like sejill or sofreh mahi powered with two owj engines and exclude any other subsystems which usually are integrated to a fighter jet. just a data link between an AWACS and these drones. two owj can produce three tons of thrust so with a really low T/W ratio of 0.2, the drone can have a 15 tons maximum take off weight. even if the empty drone weights more than an F-5 (~4 tons) and around like 6 tons, still you can carry up to 9 tons of fuel and ammunition. if each drone carry's 4 fakour missile internally still it will have room for 7 tons of fuel. f-5 internal fuel capacity is around 2 tons. it's 3.5 times more fuel. f-5 with 2.8 tons of munitions attached to it's pylons can travel about 300 km now this drone with two tons of payload and 7 tons of fuel can achieve around 1500 km of combat range (considering it's lift to drag ratio is the same as f-5).I am personally not interested in this notion of making UAVs bigger, especially non-jet powered UAVs. Unless you're dealing with adversaries with limited to no air defence capability, they do not add much capability and indeed are very vulnerable. What I am excited about however are jet powered UCAV, especially swarm systems. An example (which I mentioned few days ago) is this Iranian "Sejill" project for the Iranian Navy:
Initial information released by TasnimNews:
Maximum speed : 1000km/h
Propulsion: 2 Jet engines (Iranian made jet engines)
Designed to be launched from ships with Parachute landing *Equipped with 100km range glidebombs
https://www.tasnimnews.com/en/news/...bat-drone-with-jet-engines-designed-commander
Such system with A2A capability will be built as well, and you imagine the devastation a swarm of these can inflict.
the other day i was thinking about how turkey downed Syrian su-22 allegedly outside of AMRAAM's no escape zone range. i was thinking we know that the owj-j-85 engine which we are producing is not that powerful for a manned aircraft. so what if we make a drone like sejill or sofreh mahi powered with two owj engines and exclude any other subsystems which usually are integrated to a fighter jet. just a data link between an AWACS and these drones. two owj can produce three tons of thrust so with a really low T/W ratio of 0.2, the drone can have a 15 tons maximum take off weight. even if the empty drone weights more than an F-5 (~4 tons) and around like 6 tons, still you can carry up to 9 tons of fuel and ammunition. if each drone carry's 4 fakour missile internally still it will have room for 7 tons of fuel. f-5 internal fuel capacity is around 2 tons. it's 3.5 times more fuel. f-5 with 2.8 tons of munitions attached to it's pylons can travel about 300 km now this drone with two tons of payload and 7 tons of fuel can achieve around 1500 km of combat range (considering it's lift to drag ratio is the same as f-5).
we just need to build our own AWACS and guide our drones and missiles with it. seems like US is trying to do the same with loyal wingman drone:
no bro, unfortunately i was not aware of it.@Mithridates
Do you know anything about this UAV engine being developed:
https://twitter.com/FieldMarshalPSO
