Russia buys Iranian MALE UCAV tech

When Russia unveiled its Orion-E drone at the International Aviation and Space Salon MAKS-2017, near Moscow this summer, it bore a “striking resemblance” to an Iranian “Shahed” unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) already flying.

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What a Russian friend told me is that after seeing the performance of Shahed-129 MALE UCAV in Syria, Russians became very interested in ToT from Iran and thus began project Orion-E.

Marking their first UCAV on this size and MALE capable, Russia can even export the unarmed variant based on the agreement.



Su-30MK ToT rumors are making more sense now

Iranian drones have been very effective helping fight terrorists in Syria and Iraq. I can see why Russia would want to expand it's capabilities in this area

It makes a lot of sense for Russia and Iran to cooperate in matters such as these. They both have regional foreign policy objectives that interlap nicely, share a cordial relationship in general.

Iran has also had a lot of help in developing reconnaissance UAVs thanks to all the American and Israeli ones that "crashed" suspiciously undamaged after illegally violating her airspace. Technology gathered from reverse engineering would have been invaluable for Iran's defence industry, and sharing it with Russia would ease Russia's burden of having to develop such systems from scratch, especially after the disastrous impact the fall of the Union had on their defence industry.

Technology sharing between the two countries also allows faster development of more capable systems down the road.

Russia missed the boat on the UAV field and are playing catchup now. Buying outside UAVs makes a lot of sense, until they can get their own up and going and get their performance up to where it should be.