A large helicopter is slow to fly, but carries a large load of weapons or surveillance equipment.
Also The defense forces have been interested in the MQ-9 Reaper aircraft, the kind that Russian fighter jets caused to fall into the Black Sea on Tuesday evening.
The Defense Forces already said before the war, in July 2021, that it would start testing and experimenting with unmanned aircraft systems in the fall of the same year. However, the start was moved.
The MQ-9 Reaper was the only model specifically mentioned in the announcement, other models were not named. It also stated that the aircraft participating in the tests will not land in Finland.
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The goal of the project is to develop the capabilities of the Defense Forces, international compatibility and investigate the use of aircraft systems in cooperation with authorities.
Not much else is known about the project. The General Staff said on Wednesday that it will not comment further on the subject, which it has previously briefed on the subject.
It is known that last summer the Finnish Defense Forces said it would continue the project after a delay. According to it, testing and experimentation will continue in the next few years.
It also specified that it is a different project than, for example, the Manned-Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T) research project implemented in cooperation with Germany.
Reaper is a huge device that can stay in the air for well over a day in one flight.
Its wingspan alone is twenty meters. Thus, it is also slow to fly and at the same time an easy target for faster and more agile fighters, as it happened now.
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It is controlled from the ground by a crew of two. The Reaper dropped on Tuesday was diverted from Germany.
According to the US, it was unarmed, but one can guess that it was full of sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment, i.e. various sensors and cameras used to monitor Crimea and the Russian forces there.
Even the plane another use is to destroy the enemy.
It can be equipped with various missiles and bombs, and it became famous for the Western coalition’s fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. They were also used repeatedly for destruction missions in Afghanistan.
Such use also brought into discussion the ethical rules of modern warfare, when silent killer planes were controlled from air-conditioned containers on the other side of the world and civilians were also targeted.
Hellfire missiles and laser-guided bombs can be attached to the Reaper. It can carry a load of several hundreds of kilograms in its various mounts, so it is a suitable device for strikes after long tracking and ambushing due to its long flight time.
The United States has had hundreds of Reapers of different development versions at its disposal, and it has also lost dozens of them due to technical malfunctions or because the adversary managed to shoot them down.
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