Sergei Semka, the governor of Novosibirsk region (russia), has announced that in his opinion, the production of the S-70 Okhotnik will “begin in a couple of years”, but it will be at least the third time that the start of serial production of this UAV is postponed.
In reality, it has been noted that russia will not be able to deploy its Okhotnik UAV for “hunting” on time. In December 2023, there were reports stating that the modernization of the facilities of the Novosibirsk Aircraft Production Association Plant for producing the Okhotnik drones would take approximately five years.
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In 2020, the United Aircraft Corporation claimed that the Ministry of Defense of the russian federation would start receiving the S-70 Okhotnik UAV by 2023. However, the start of serial production was subsequently delayed to “no earlier than 2024”. And now there is information about mass production being put off for 2 more years.
Overall, the Okhotnik program can be considered as a “long-term project” since plans for such a type of UAV were announced in 2009, and development began 11 years ago, in 2012, when the Sukhoi Company was chosen to create a heavy strike unmanned aerial vehicle weighing up to 20 tons.
The initial unveiling of the UAV took place in 2018, followed by its first flight on August 3, 2019. Notably, just a couple of months later, in September, the UAV conducted its first joint flight with the Su-57 aircraft.
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