Drone Warfare Summit held October 27–29 in the Philippines, the Ukrainian delegation presented a concept for the FA v1 unmanned fighter. Although it sounds unrealistic, a look at the specifications makes everything fall into place.
According to Defense Blog, the illustration was shown during a presentation of Ukraine's vision for the development of aerial and maritime drones. The project embodies experience gained during the war with russia.
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From Defense Express's perspective, at first glance the render looks like a fighter and that's the only feature that suggests it's a manned-type combat aircraft. Looking at the specs, it becomes clear this is actually an air-defense UAV, which the tactical level label also hints at.
The declared range is 30 km, maximum altitude 5,000 m, and speed above 250 km/h. Those figures are close to typical interceptor-drone parameters currently used by the Defense Forces.
Such air-defence drones have shown good effectiveness against enemy UAVs both reconnaissance fixed-wing types and various attack drones, from Lancets to Shahed-type UAVs. So its logical that this direction is included among prospective projects.
Although the depicted UAV does not match any known development, it resembles common radio-controlled aircraft models produced worldwide; the image may therefore be either an actual concept or an illustrative visualization.
Also interesting is the stated target-detection range of up to 15 km. This most likely refers to optical targeting, which is often fitted on interceptor drones and typically uses machine-learning and AI methods.
Overall, FA v1 can be read both as a prototype anti-aircraft UAV project and as an example of baseline characteristics for this class of systems. They remain relevant given the mass attacks by russia and the worldwide spread of UAV technologies.
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