ALTIUS-600: the Ukrainian military will receive American drones

As part of the American military assistance package announced on Friday, February 23, Ukraine will receive ALTIUS-600 UAVs.

They can perform reconnaissance and strike missions.

The ALTIUS-600 UAV was created by the American aerospace company Area-I, which specializes in the development of unmanned aerial vehicles.

Drones of the ALTIUS family have a modular constitution that allows the use of a large nomenclature of available payloads and the performance of various tasks.

The ALTIUS-600 UAV has 1 meter in length, and its wingspan is 2.54 m. The weight of the drone is 12.25 kg along with the payload of up to 3 kg. It is primarily intended for aerial surveillance and reconnaissance.

The drone can be launched from aircraft, ground and offshore platforms using a common launch tube or pneumatic integrated launch system or other systems. The UAV wings deploy rapidly after ejection from the launch tube. It has an engine with a pushing two-propeller in the tail.

The nose of the ALTIUS-600 can accommodate a variety of equipment for collecting intelligence or EW systems.

In addition, the drone can be equipped with a warhead that turns this UAV into a kamikaze drone.

The ALTIUS-600 is controlled manually using the ground control station’s manual remote control system, while can also be pre-programmed.

At the same time, the drone can remain in the air for up to 4 hours, the stated range of its flight reaches 440 km.

It should be recalled that in the spring of 2021, the next phase of flight tests of the XQ-58A Valkyrie promising combat drone took place in the United States. During the test flights, the payload was first launched from the inner compartment of the XQ-58A armament. Then it was the ALTIUS-600 drone that was tested.

Subsequently, in the same year, representatives of the U.S. Army launched the ALTIUS UAV using the PILS pneumatic launch system as an experiment. Two such systems equipped a Polaris DAGOR light car.