MOSCOW. May 4 (Interfax-AVN) - Chinese aircraft manufacturers are ready to cooperate with Russian companies in developing supersonic UAVs, the second Russian-Chinese UAV conference, held in Beijing, stated.
"At the conference the Chinese side expressed its wish to develop hypersonic UAVs jointly with Russian companies," a source in the Russian defense industry told Interfax-Military News Agency on Wednesday.
He noted that Russian and Chinese experts believed that high-speed UAVs were the future.
"The U.S. focuses its efforts on developing subsonic UAVs. However, low-intensity conflicts demonstrate that survivability of such UAVs is quite low. It is a must to considerably increase their speed for them to breach contemporary air defense systems," the conference noted.
"Russian and Chinese experts stand for joining efforts in developing high-speed UAVs. However, the realization of such projects can only start after all issues, pertaining to confidentiality and classified materials, have been settled," the source said.
The fact that UAV research and development is classified is a considerable obstacle to further promotion of the Russian-Chinese cooperation in aircraft-building, participants in the conference noted.