King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) has announced the success of its specialists in converting a manned aircraft into a drone, according to the Saudi Press Agency.
“This was disclosed by Prince Dr. Turki bin Saud bin Mohammed, the KACST President, pointing to the successful field test of the drone named “Al-Nawras” which has many strategic advantages.
He explained that a squadron of three drones of Al-Nawras have successfully been flying through one control room to carry out joint missions and these strategic type of drones can fly up to 30 hours,” the agency reported.
The Yemeni conflict has clearly shown that Saudi military personnel and officers have little will to fight enemies of the kingdom in other countries. Considering the quality of life in Saudi Arabia, there is nothing new in that Saudi officers don’t want to risk their lifes in some foreign country. The Saudi leadership believes that the problem can be solved via the development of unmanned combat systems that limits the risks for military personnel.
I look forward to the time when these Saudi drones can be covertly ‘ taken over ‘ by their intended victims nations and used to bomb Saudi Arabia and their best bum pals in Israel.
If they are taken over, it is likely by Israel, the only high tech country in the Mena.
Israel is rather overrated in my humble opinion. They have all the toys but not much courage. The Israeli’s are rather adept at murdering and torturing civilians though. Including children.
Do not underestimate the Iranians. They have a fairly advanced economy with a highly educated population. Unlike the Saudis who can buy everything, which has turned them lazy, the Iranians have been under western embargoes since like forever, so they had to be creative.
I would put my efforts into unmanned aircraft, too, if I had saudi idiots to do the fighting…
One could say their aircraft have always been unmanned.
Fantastic! These drones will provide hours of entertaining coverage of fat royals waddling away from Riyadh when it is finally overrun by the Houthis. Only problem with drone video, of course, is no audio. We won’t get to hear their little girl-like terrified screaming and begging as the pissed-off Houthis slowly hunt them down one by one in the desert and exterminate them.
That’s great, now maybe they can invent pants.
I used to think that drones should be unmanned, reliable, cheap, easy and affordable for maintenance…
And then you have Saudis who are proud of their 80 million $ drone, which will cost them 45k $ per flight hour, and they dare to say that it will have autonomy of 30hrs of flight, against regular F-15s’s 1,5hrs?!?!?!
I mean… whaaaaatttttt?????