Denel SERAPH Stealthy deep recon / strike UCAV

Now this is what i like!!

www.denel.co.za...

Its a beautiful looking deep penetration and strike UCAV, made in South Africa! The companies legit and well respected it seems, as they have many links and contracts with the US, UK and Middle east.

Its the only piccie i have found so far, but if any one out there has any other piccies or info i would welcome it to be added.

(Planeman, zaphod, Mech32, Mike A, im looking at you all....seems you got some really cool info hid away where you guys are.... )

Thanks for mentioning me! But sadly I don't have much more information. IIRC work started around this in the mid 90s but I've not even heard of a prototype flying.

Though Denel is definitely a respected company I've never really thought much of Seraph; I mean for start the degree to which it really is low observable is debatable considering the money that the company and government could put into it and the experience they’ve had in the area. Also the endurance and payload numbers that have been touted seem a little on the small side for a strike vehicle, with an 80kg payload it could probably carry maybe two Hellfire if that and with an endurance of just over an hour the utility of such a system just wouldn’t be worth it in my opinion.

As a tactical ISTAR penetrator it seems ok but nothing amazing.

Thanks Mike_A for the thoughts about seraph, so could you expand a bit on the research side of it? what do you think about it joining forces with SAAB to try and penetrate the UCAV market ? I have seen the swedes uav projects and they look neat, but if they could scale up this craft, then maybe they could be onto a winner?

(Oh but landing would need to be at high speed due to the wings sweep wouldnt it? so youd need a long runway?)

I like this drone... If it would ever built, I'd rate it ahead of two J-UCAVs from Airforce and Navy, that's for sure. It isn't only nice looking jet, it's lethal and don't underestimate this jet. Way to go, South Africa.

I can only agree with everything Mike said. I've dig before for more info but nothing solid....

Denel really impress me, particularly their Kentron arm (the missiles), but I really wonder whether this ever made it into the sky although clearly the project is still live because Denel are still pushing it.

The SEEKER II mentioned in GSA's link seems to be a copy of an Israeli UAV design going by external appearence.

Although Denel have made some impressive air to air missiles, weaponry electronics, etc i dont see them having the resources and the technology base to pull off a stealth UAV by themselves. Perhaps collaborating with Israel or a european nation on this project would be a better bet.

Just my 2 paise.

GSA,

Reminds me of a concept UAV called 'Flowchart' with much the same configuration shown back in the mid-90's when the South Africans were trying to drum up aero-business by advertising all their 'open testranges' in AvLeak.

As I recall, Kentron or Atlas were hinting that it was 'either the halfscale prototype for a UCAV needing partners to complete. Or available to act as a payload surrogate for foreign MEPs'. As a kind of typical brag-whiles-begging approach to PRBS.

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Its a beautiful looking deep penetration and strike UCAV, made in South Africa! The companies legit and well respected it seems, as they have many links and contracts with the US, UK and Middle east.

Its the only piccie i have found so far, but if any one out there has any other piccies or info i would welcome it to be added.
>>

It had better have great mileage 'cause their ain't nothin' there for gas. I'd also hate to try and pararecover it because it looks like the nose is going to be all sensors/weapons bay and that tail all engine which means if you bleed off the gas from the longchord wing and micro-cranked extensions, it may well be hard to keep the thing off it's nose where presumably all 80kilos of vulnerabe avionics are.
Not to mention tear away panels right infront of the intake.

Dunno if I trust the data given either as the .pdf file shows a truck launch configuration that cannot be more than 12ft long and maybe 400-800lbs yet it's given a cruise speed of .85 Mach at 30,000 feet (which is a little high for an 80 kilo set of optics to resolve from) and a range of 1,300km with only 100 minutes of endurance.

As me pappy used to say: "Riiiiiiight."

By comparison, I recall a system testbed we worked on called 'Argus' I believe it was that employed a BQM-34 with testbed netcentric architectures (part of the Talon system IIRR which is itself a precursor ot TTNT?) that was intended solely for Prestrike photo handoff and BIA. The Firefly of course being something closer to 22ft long and 2,100lbs for roughly the same endurance and half the total flight range in baseline configuration.

Them SA folks truly must've finished their Africanner-to-Alien technical dictionary so that they could complete the reverse engineering of their UFO if this Angel thingy matches what a Firebee can do in half the size:weight range.


KPl.