Norwegian Minister of Defense Bjorn Arild Gram has announced a transfer of a thousand of new Black Hornet unmanned aerial systems. Note that each system consists of at least two drones in a kit, thus the total number of provided microdrones is 2,000 at least.
The official statement by Norway's Ministry of Defense details that the supply was specifically requested by Ukrainian authorities due to the positive experience gained by soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the battles against the russian invasion army.
Read more: Teledyne FLIR and Primordial Labs Introduce Voice-Controlled Black Hornet Nano Drone at SOF Week Conference
On a side note, Bjorn Arild Gram also said his country would give Ukraine additional NASAMS air defense units, with fire control centers and launchers. But in this article, we shall focus on explaining how the Black Hornet impacted the warfare in Ukraine because not much has been said about this topic as of yet.
The provision of new drones should not be expected all at once, since the statement says: "Close cooperation with the defense industry will be essential in order to maintain necessary deliveries of military materiel to Ukraine in the future."
After all, a batch of 1,000 kits is indeed a large one. For comparison, since 2007, i.e. in 16 years of production, there were 14,000 Black Hornet systems manufactured in various modifications overall. The drone kits were supplied to more than 40 countries, of which the USA was the most interested customer.
The Black Hornet is made by the Norwegian company Teledyne FLIR. With its combat weight of 32 grams, this "mosquito drone" is a unique asset for reconnaissance on the lower level infantry units, especially in urban environments. And despite its small dimensions, it has a full-fledged thermal camera, can stay up in the air for 25 mins, and operate within a 1.6 km radius from the pilot.
One of the Ukrainian UAV operators shared his impressions of working with Black Hornet. As he shared his opinion with the "Kruk" school for UAV operators, he stressed that this drone should not be even compared to Mavic or FPV drones as it belongs to an "entirely different class and for other scenarios of application."
Although camera quality unsurprisingly cannot compete with larger drones, it compensates for being inconspicuous: it can be spotter against clear skies from 50 meters or against a wall from 20 meters. As for the noise, a Black Hornet managed to fly past a group of soldiers at a distance of 10 meters from them without being noticed.
Before this provision, these drones were supplied to Ukraine as part of a joint military aid package from Norway and Great Britain amounting to $9.5 mln. Given the open source information that a single Black Hornet system costs around USD 40,000 to 60,000, the Armed Forces of Ukraine could have received 150 to 240 systems to use on the frontlines.
Read more: Ukraine to Get Black Hornet Nano UAV: a Fantastic 32 Gram Pocket Drone With a Thermal Imager
