Video of the Chinese military drone's maiden flight has been made public. What missions can the Skyhawk, with its "internationally advanced performance," perform?

On Feb. 27, the microblogging "CCTV Military" published a video of the successful maiden flight of the Chinese-made "Sky Eagle" unmanned reconnaissance drone.

"CCTV military" revealed that the drone first flew successfully in November 2017, but this is the first time video of its first flight has been made public.

Video screenshot of the first successful flight of the domestic unmanned reconnaissance aircraft "Skyhawk"

According to Aviation Knowledge magazine, the Skyhawk is positioned as a tactical battlefield UAV for infiltration and reconnaissance, with a flying-wing configuration, high stealth, high altitude and high speed, long endurance and other technical features.

"From its development to the maiden flight, the technical team successfully addressed the key technologies of control, power, structure and materials of the tailless flying wing layout with a great aspect ratio."

More than six years have passed since the Skyhawk's first flight, during which the research and development team has continued to test and improve it, making it the "best" UAV of its kind in the world.

Chief designer of "Sky Eagle" Ma Hongzhong

Guangming.com wrote an article about it, describing the Skyhawk UAV, which has a maximum takeoff weight of 3 tons, a drone with extraordinary "vision."

"After years of testing and improvement, the Skyhawk UAV has demonstrated remarkable strength in infiltrating or approaching important targets for tactical reconnaissance in high-threat battle environments," Guangming.com added

The picture shows the model of Skyhawk UAV

Obtaining intelligence information in a rigorous comparison system and high threat environment is the basic function that the Skyhawk UAV must have.

Ma Hongzhong said, "Therefore, we combined stealth capability, wing arrangement and high altitude and high speed flight to develop the Skyhawk, which can perform tasks in high-threat environments. From the point of view of indicator use, if the indicators are very high, relying completely on the aircraft and mission load can make the UAV very large and heavy, but it will bring a lot of pressure on the operational use of the UAV. So in order for the UAV to enter the high-risk battlefield and get close enough for reconnaissance, the requirements for mission equipment have been reduced, and this program we are giving now is also an effect of integrated multidisciplinary design."

"Currently, the 'Skyhawk' is a tactical battle penetration reconnaissance-oriented UAV that serves as the front-end reconnaissance node in the strike chain. But subsequent development into a 'detection and strike' model with attack capability is also possible." Ma Hongzhong said.