France’s Directorate General of Armaments (DGA) reported on its LinkedIn page about conducting quite an interesting experiment. So, they just threw out dozens of drones directly from an A400M military transport aircraft.
It’s reported that 3 flights were made, during which a total of 72 drones were dropped. Of them, 51 through the rear ramp, and another 21 through side doors. Judging from available footage, only copter-type drones of various sizes and forms were dropped, including FPV drones.
Howewer, these were not full-fledged drones, as DGA says, these were only models without electronics. Although it can be assumed that some electronics were still there, namely equipment for recording flight data. The goal of such an experiment is to check how air flows affect such drones during launch from aircraft.
The fact is that the biggest problem when launching a drone from an aircraft is its subsequent stabilization, because the aircraft creates turbulence behind it.
This is in addition to the fact that it’s simply thrown by hand overboard, as well as the fact that it simultaneously encounters a strong air flow.
Therefore, the French conduct such experiments and create simulations to understand drone behavior during such launch.
Further, DGA says that they will continue to conduct such experiments on board C130J and CB235 aircraft. Thus, in the future, France wants to be able to deploy hundreds of drones from transport aircraft.
French Air Force Airbus A400M / Photo credit: Image Crown
At the same time, these aircraft won’t need to be additionally modified, which would entail large expenditures of resources and time. It’s enough to simply place all necessary equipment and drones themselves in the cargo compartment, and then launch them either with a special device or with human assistance.
However, a very important conceptual question arises here. The fact is that any copter-type drones have very limited range and operating time, which allows them to fly a distance of several dozen kilometers. And the platform for their launch deepens this problem.
Altius 600 strike UAV / Open source illustrative photo
A cargo aircraft is not at all a small target. It cannot freely fly at such a short distance from the front line, otherwise it will simply be shot down. This will work only if the adversary has no air defense means at all.
Better option would be to launch fixed-wing drones from such aircraft. They are easier to stabilize, fly farther, carry more payload, and can be launched en masse directly from a transport-launch container.
French Air Force A400M UAV / Open source photo
It’s quite likely that France is also considering such an option. However, currently during tests we saw only copter-type drones, whose flight data will not be relevant for fixed-wing drones. Therefore, for now it remains only to wait for more details to understand how they plan to use them.
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