The first flight tests of the ultra-short take-off and landing heavy transport drone “Partizan” took place in Novosibirsk, reported the Advanced Research Foundation (FPI), which is the customer of this development.

“February 16 at the Siberian Research Institute of Aviation (SibNIA) named after S.A. Chaplygin passed the first flight tests of the Partizan heavy transport unmanned aerial vehicle ultra-short takeoff and landing demonstrator,” the press release says.

According to the FPI, the first flight of Partizan took place in a manned mode “to ensure safety and record flight data for subsequent training of the automatic control system tested on a semi-real stand.” The flight lasted 20 minutes and took place at an altitude of 200 m at a speed of 50 to 200 km/h.

“(During the tests. -

RT

) a significant increase in takeoff and landing performance was confirmed compared to aircraft of this class. Placing an active airflow system on the aircraft along the entire span of the lower wing will allow Partizan to significantly reduce the takeoff and landing distance and ensure stable control at ultra-low speeds of up to 50 km/h,” says a message posted on the Fund’s website.

According to the director of SibNIA, Honored Test Pilot of the Russian Federation Vladimir Barsuk, in the future “Partizan” can compete with similar vertical take-off devices.

“I am confident that Partizan will be able to become a worthy alternative to helicopter-type aircraft that are in demand in various fields of application... Therefore, we are currently working together with the government of the Novosibirsk region to plan the creation of a research and production center for unmanned aerial systems at the Berdsk airfield “Central,” the FPI press service quotes him as saying.

Earlier, in August 2023, Anton Ryazantsev, chairman of the industrial council of the NTI Center in the direction of “Technologies for modeling and development of new functional materials with specified properties,” said that in 2024 it is planned to deploy a production complex and produce ten serial copies of Partizan.

Make aviation accessible

Development of the project began in September 2019. First, the designers needed to determine the layout of the drone. The main goal of the engineers was to create an aircraft-type device that could use a helipad as a runway. The main difficulty was landing on such a compact runway.

“Before landing, you need to quickly reduce speed. And this complex maneuver is still working according to calculations and confirmed tests. We are creating such an impossible airplane that lands on a helipad,” said the project manager from the Seed Fund, Yan Chibisov, in an interview with TASS in 2021.

To solve this problem, it was decided to use the technology of active blowing of the wing with a distributed propeller-engine group in the design of the device. To test this concept, SibNIA specialists created a flying laboratory based on the TVS-2MS aircraft. During the tests, the effectiveness of the selected technical solutions for ensuring ultra-short takeoff and landing was confirmed.

  • UAV "Partizan"

  • © SibNIA

At the second stage, the designers moved directly to creating the Partizan prototype. According to the FPI, the final version of the aircraft will have to land and take off from a site measuring 50 x 50 m “with a height of obstacles on the border of up to 15 m.” The flight range of such a device will be 1 thousand km, the maximum speed will be more than 300 km/h. The UAV will be able to carry on board up to 1 ton of payload.

The developers emphasize that the device is made entirely from domestic raw materials and components. The only exception is the marching power plant. However, it will have to be replaced by a domestic hybrid power unit - its main elements have already been manufactured and are undergoing bench tests, the Fund added.

Another advantage of Partizan will be the ability to operate in two modes: unmanned and manned. For example, the vehicle will be able to transport cargo in a fully autonomous mode without human intervention, and when transporting passengers, the Partizan will be controlled by a pilot.

“The automatic control system will significantly simplify piloting the aircraft, which, together with a significant reduction in the requirements for takeoff and landing sites, in the future can make domestic aviation truly accessible, and the Partizan drone in demand among a large number of operators in various fields of application,” noted in the FPI.

It is assumed that, in addition to cargo and passenger transportation, the machine can also be used in air ambulances and for aeromonitoring. The Ministry of Emergency Situations could use the Partizan drone in rescue operations and to extinguish fires, and in agriculture such a device could process fields. In turn, in the military sphere, “Partizan” is capable of performing reconnaissance or transport functions.

“Trend for the development of unmanned transportation”

According to analysts, transport drones such as Partizan could be used, for example, to deliver goods to hard-to-reach areas of the North.

“There is a huge space for using UAVs outside cities. It is in this direction that technologies are developing very actively. "Partisan" is one such example. Already, large companies in the oil and gas complex and Russian Post are trying, as an experiment, to use UAVs to deliver mail, cargo, documentation or spare parts to distant drilling sites. At today's technological level, this turns out to be much simpler, more efficient and more profitable than driving a caravan with trucks through the tundra for a whole week. The UAV will complete this task much faster,” said Roman Gusarov, editor-in-chief of the Avia.ru portal, in a commentary to RT.

  • "Partisan"

  • © Foundation for Advanced Study

A similar point of view is shared by the head of the International Training Center for Unmanned Aviation, Maxim Kondratiev.

“The trend towards the development of unmanned transportation of goods, not only small, but also large, weighing a ton or more, is observed all over the world. Moreover, such delivery can be carried out not only to hard-to-reach places, but also to other regions. The Partizan project is part of this trend, which makes it relevant and promising,” the analyst noted in a conversation with RT.

Roman Gusarov added that unmanned control elements have been used in aviation for quite a long time and there is a lot of groundwork in this area. At the same time, the role of autonomous systems, according to the analyst, will only grow.

“In the 1980s, we were able to land the reusable Buran spacecraft in unmanned mode. Ordinary civil passenger aircraft in which we fly are also almost drones. Pilots there participate very little in controlling the aircraft; in many ways they only observe and control the operation of the systems. Of course, similar solutions are possible on smaller vessels like the Partizan,” the specialist believes.

At the same time, he believes that in passenger air travel the transition to fully autonomous flights will not happen soon.

“Technically, passenger aviation is quite ready for the transition to completely unmanned aerial vehicles. But passengers are probably not ready for this. Today we are unlikely to want to board a plane that does not have a pilot. For now, we are only talking about moving in the future to control the aircraft not by two, but by one pilot. Such projects are already beginning to be worked out, including in the Russian Federation,” Gusarov concluded.