Poland’s Łukasiewicz Institute of Aviation has designed a new unmanned aerial vehicle dubbed HAASTA that is ideal for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, and photogrammetry, infrastructure monitoring and other civilian uses.
The UAV is armed with a mounted 5.45mm machine gun to target and destroy smaller enemy drones, such as the Shahed-type loitering munition.
Italian firm Eurotech contributed to the design of the 9.5-foot-long HAASTA, which features a 13-foot wingspan and the capability to carry up to 77 pounds of payload.
The institute put the UAV’s speed range at 74 to 170 miles per hour and altitude ceiling at over 4 miles high. The system was built according to airworthiness standards under STANAG 4703 for fixed-wing, light drones.
A prototype of the UAV was unveiled at the annual MSPO defense trade show, a four-day event in Kielce that is set to close on Friday.
Other presentations by the institute at MSPO include acoustically optimized drone rotors, non-satellite navigation systems, radio altimeters and artificial intelligence-based control systems.
