For 11 years Russia has been unable to create the Altius drone, which should surpass the Bayraktar TB2 and MQ-Reaper - but it stole $17 million

In 2011, Russia began developing its own Altair attack drone. Eleven years have passed, and Russian designers were only able to create a prototype.

What is known

During this time the drone got a new name - "Altius". Traditionally, the Russians have claimed that it has no analogues in the world. However, the drone is available in a single specimen, which only made it to the flight test stage and successfully completed it.

The development of Altius began in the same year as the creation of Bayraktar TB2. But while the Turkish strike drone is already helping to liberate Snake Island, the Russian "analogue" only made its first test flight in 2018. Flight tests were originally scheduled for 2014, but were postponed twice.

The developer of the drone was the Sokol company. It turned out that during the work on the drone, the CEO embezzled 1 billion rubles ($17 million at the average exchange rate in 2018). After that, the project was handed over to the Ural Civil Aviation Plant.

Another series of tests ended at the end of last year. Serial production of the Altius drones has not yet begun.

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