HAASTA drone receives a regular machine gun to hunt Iranian Shahed
A prototype of the HAASTA combat drone was presented in Poland. It is capable of deceiving air defense and destroying enemy drones.
According to Breaking Defense, the drone was developed by the Lukasiewicz Aviation Institute in cooperation with EuroTech, an Italian-registered company. HAASTA’s wingspan is just under 4 meters. The fuselage of the drone is 3 meters long. The drone can carry up to 35 kg of payload. The power of its hybrid electric motor is 20 kW. с. This is enough to accelerate to 270 km/h.
A catapult is required to launch HAASTA. When using standard radio communication, the drone can move 30 km away from the takeoff point. The Mesh system provides it with a flight range of 80 km. If directional antennas are used, its LoS range will be 170 km. The Polish-Italian drone can stay in the sky for up to 10 hours.
UAVs were originally developed to counter kamikaze drones like Shahed. To destroy them, a 5.45 mm machine gun is mounted under the bottom of the HAASTA. In the future, the drone will receive a larger caliber machine gun.
