VT-Patrol is a short-range military

unmanned aerial vehicle An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or unmanned aircraft system (UAS), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft with no human pilot, crew, or passengers onboard, but rather is controlled remotely or is autonomous.De Gruyter Handbook of Dron ...

(UAV) manufactured by

Viettel The Military Industry and Telecoms Group (), Trade name, trading as Viettel or Viettel Group (), is a Vietnamese State-owned enterprise, state-owned multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications, technology and manufacturing C ...

, a major telecom player at Vietnam and also a R&D company of the

Army An army, ground force or land force is an armed force that fights primarily on land. In the broadest sense, it is the land-based military branch, service branch or armed service of a nation or country. It may also include aviation assets by ...

. It saw its maiden flight in 2013.

Specifications

Each VT-Patrol has a height of 0.78 m and a length of 2.31 m. It also has a

wingspan The wingspan (or just span) of a bird or an airplane is the distance from one wingtip to the opposite wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777–200 has a wingspan of , and a wandering albatross (''Diomedea exulans'') caught in 1965 had a wingsp ...

of 3.35 m, weighs 26 kg, has a velocity of 100–150 km/h and an operational range of 50 km. HD and

infrared camera Infrared thermography (IRT), thermal video or thermal imaging, is a process where a thermal camera captures and creates an image of an object by using infrared radiation emitted from the object in a process, which are examples of infrared im ...

sources can identify enemies within 600 m. The UAV was planned to enter service in 2013, and other plans for bigger Vietnamese designed-and-made UAVs are still on the way.

References

Unmanned military aircraft of Vietnam {{UAV-stub