The British Ministry of Defense the other day published a notice about the first wave of military equipment supplies to Ukraine starting this July. This equipment is sponsored by the International Fund for Ukraine established by the United Kingdom in summer 2022 and includes various aerial reconnaissance systems.
Defense News noticed that among British Malloy T150 from Malloy Aeronautics, Dutch DeltaQuad Pro and Danish Astero ISR from Nordic Wing, there are also two unspecified drones. The journalists identified one of them as the Tekever AR3 system and received a confirmation from the Portugal-based manufacturer.
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The AR3 is a small-sized vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) drone designed for reconnaissance missions in sea and land environments where there's not much space to deploy a catapult as for a conventional winged unmanned aircraft.
The drone has a wingspan of 3.5 meters and a fuselage length of 1.9 meters. Weight is 25 kg with an additional 4 kg of payload. In the standard VTOL version it can stay in the air for up to 8 hours which can be increased to 16 hours when launched from a catapult. Altitude ceiling is 3,600 m above sea level, connection range is 100 km, cruising speed is 75-90 km/h (56 mph).
Interestingly, this drone is in operation with two countries, Portugal and Nigeria, and the drone in the video features the NAF 167 marking, typical for the systems active with the Nigerian Air Force. It raised the question of where the drones for Ukraine will come from.
However, it looks like the footage of Nigerian drones had only an illustrative purpose. Defense official at the Nigeria High Commission in the UK Maj. MS Muhammad explained to Defense News that his homeland country indeed bought Portuguese drones but "none have been donated in any way or form to Ukraine or any other country."
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