The situation around the unmanned reconnaissance plane downed (crashed) in Karabakh remains unclear. Neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan have presented serious evidences, supporting their versions of what happened (in the first case, the plane belonged to Azerbaijan, and the second version it did not belong to Azerbaijan.)
According to the Armenian version, in Karabakh they are watching the flights of Azerbaijani drones for a long time, and eventually found a way to neutralize them. It was only reported that the plane was shot down by a mobile system produced by the Armenian military-industrial complex.
It is difficult to say what lies behind this. However, the information about the aircraft was published with two days delay. First the Armenian media wrote about it on September 14, indicating that the plane was shot down “this morning.” But later it was reported that the drone shot down on September 12 at 7:30 am. Why Armenians do were silent for two days?
If you believe the claims of our neighbour, their defence forces worked flawlessly and confidently control the airspace over Karabakh and the occupied territories. In this case, they should immediately detect not only the drone, but a place from where it was launched. The range of this model (Hermes 450) is only 200 km., and the defense systems in Karabakh had to fix it advance. Therefore, it is not clear what the Armenians thought about within two days.
According to the Azerbaijani side, the drone does not belong to Azerbaijan, then whose is it?
While acknowledging the crash, the military department of Azerbaijan should give a clear answer – where did the drone fly to Azerbaijan? Otherwise, we must admit that the Air Force and Air Defence of Azerbaijan eat their bread for nothing, if UFOs are flying in the front line.
The version that the plane could belong to a third party (Iran) is unconvincing.
The radius of the flight of the vehicle does not allow suggesting that it could fly from Russia or Turkey.
As for the other characteristics of the aircraft, it is quite expensive. Thus, the drone produced by the Israeli company Elbit Systems costs approximately $ 2 million, but if it was bought with ground-based systems, correcting the flight, then it costs $ 10 million.
The speed of Hermes is 130 – 176 km / h, the flight radius is 200 miles, and the duration of the flight is 14 hours. The plane is very fairly big – 10.5 meters in wingspan and weight is 450 kg.
Depending on the modification, the aircraft may have one or two engines of 52 or 70 horsepower.
The aircraft has a multi-purpose mission: for exploration, and air strikes against missiles. Most often it is used for surveillance, patrolling, and supporting communications in the field.
Hermes is made of composite materials, making it difficult to detect by means of air defense.
The autopilot operates completely autonomously, using receiver GPS. There are two navigational computers, two sets of communication equipment and others.
GPS allows automatically taking off and landing.
The unit is equipped with electro-optical, infra-red and laser sensors, as well as data exchange system, which can transmit the image in real time regime to the ground control points.
In some cases, “Hermes” can carry rockets “air-land” for the “point” strike on moving and stationary objects.
In particular, many of the leaders of Palestinian militants were killed by Israelis with the help of this machine.