Russia's stealth drone would serve in a “Loyal Wingman” capacity, taking the lead ahead of manned fighter jets in contested environments, gathering and relaying battle-space information to pilots, and physically protecting them by absorbing incoming enemy air-to-air or surface-to-air missiles.
Russia s Stealth Drone Could Be a Battlefield Terror: Here s Why
The Okhotnik platform, Russian for ‘Hunter’ is a large, unmanned, single-engine aerial vehicle of a flying-wing design, intended to perform both reconnaissance and intelligence gathering as well as fly combat missions.
Russia’s Okhotnik heavy unmanned aerial vehicle completed flight tests, RIA Novosti, a Russian state-owned news agency reported late last year.
Quoting a defense sector source with knowledge of the flight trials, RIA reported that, “from the strip of the military airfield of the Center for Combat Training and Combat Use of the Russian Aerospace Forces at the Ashuluk training ground, several flights of the Okhotnik were performed with functional simulators of guided air-to-air missiles. Such missiles in the combat version are designed to destroy other aircraft.”