Largest drone in Africa, built in SA, undergoes successful test flight

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Huge drone made in South Africa takes flight

Pretoria-based defence group Milkor's 380 drone underwent a successful first test flight three years and seven months after the project kicked off, Netwerk24 reports.

The Milkor 380 is the largest drone built in Africa, with a wingspan of 18.6 metres, a continuous flight time of up to 35 hours, a range of up to 2,000km, and a maximum altitude of 9,000 metres.
 
A couple of photos I took of it at last year's AAD exhibition which give an idea of the size. It is comparable to a regular aircraft.

View attachment 1605934

View attachment 1605936
size is usually determined by the ordinance and sensor requirements. Then determine the desired loiter time and you end up with the size required.

This one does seems to be able to carry a lot of ordinance.
 
Time for the Cash in Transit bandits, to dig up and dust off the ol' RPG's
 
Would be interesting to strap a 30 Cal. Browning onto it and go hunt poachers and border smugglers...
 
Huge drone made in South Africa takes flight

Pretoria-based defence group Milkor's 380 drone underwent a successful first test flight three years and seven months after the project kicked off, Netwerk24 reports.

The Milkor 380 is the largest drone built in Africa, with a wingspan of 18.6 metres, a continuous flight time of up to 35 hours, a range of up to 2,000km, and a maximum altitude of 9,000 metres.
This is awesome. There must be a great export market for this? How do we fare against other drones? Is it bullet proof?
 
That's not fair, I am sure they can run it into a mountain side.

That assumes they can even find the damn mountain... knowing our lot, that would be a challenge in and of itself. I would think they'd run it into the runway before it even got off the ground.
 
This is awesome. There must be a great export market for this? How do we fare against other drones? Is it bullet proof?
Even Iran are making drones. It flies at 9000 meters, so an AK 47 shouldn‘t damage it too much, unless someone is firing at it from a Boeing.
 
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Seems RPG's are only good for about 1km from a quick search i did now. So as long as they stay at high altitude, they golden I guess. 9km up, nobody will be seeing that bad boy taking your buddies out all stealth like
Dangit!
Whelp, back to the drawing board then...
 
Would be interesting to strap a 30 Cal. Browning onto it and go hunt poachers and border smugglers...
That requires the drone to engage at lower altitudes. The best is to stay up high and guide your Hellfire missile onto target.
 
They won’t need to, they’re capable of building something far superior and probably already have…
Yep... and somewhat different scale.

Israeli-Drones-ONL_3111137a.png
 
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