British-made reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) called “Watchkeeper” not only cannot function in unfavourable weather conditions, but also cost more than $6 million per unit. This was reported by The Times newspaper.
“Britain’s fleet of Watchkeeper drones can barely function in adverse weather conditions and none of them are involved in any operations, despite each costing about five million pounds (more than six million dollars – ed.),” the publication said.
According to the British newspaper, the prototype for these reconnaissance UAVs was the Israeli Hermes 450 drone. The publication notes that the British version turned out to be too modified, so it turned out to be “less successful” than the original model.
The Times said that the British version of the UAV was “so heavily modified” that it became necessary to create about two thousand additional system requirements. The Watchkeeper also became heavier than the Hermes 450.
The British press, citing an unnamed source, emphasised that of the 54 Watchkeeper UAVs, 8 have already been scrapped. In turn, the price of the scrapped drones is 40 million pounds or $50 million.
“Several of them (British drones. – ed.) crashed as they were burdened with additional parameters”, – specified The Times.
We will remind, earlier CEO of the Centre for Complex Unmanned Solutions Dmitry Kuzyakin said that Russian engineers found in the captured Ukrainian FPV-drones batteries used by the US space agency NASA in the Martian programme.