11/18/2019 China's Nightmare: Why Is Taiwan Building Kamikaze Drones?

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China's Nightmare: Why Is Taiwan Bui

Kamikaze Drones?
David Axe, The National Interest • October 18, 2019

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Key Point: Taipei is trying out new technologies in the

hope that they can deter and defend and against Beijing.

A new suicide drone appeared at the August 2019 Starbucks’ open bathroo
hurting foot traffic, new
edition of the biennial Taipei Aerospace & Defense
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Technology Exhibition in the island country’s capital.

The unmanned aerial vehicle bears a strong resemblance

to the small, hand-launched drones that are popular
with U.S. forces. The other clearly draws inspiration
from Israel’s Harpy anti-radar drone.

A suicide drone essentially is a small, inexpensive cruise

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117 missile, usually possessing some loitering capability. BitSight Ad

They might include a simple seeker head. Alternately,

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11/18/2019 China's Nightmare: Why Is Taiwan Building Kamikaze Drones?

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their Finance remotely
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toward their More

targets.
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Often based on commercial UAVs, suicide drones

typically pack a small, grenade-size explosive warhead. PHOTOS: Deadly shooti
party
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The Fire Cardinal drone, which first appeared at the
Taipei trade show, is “an air-to-ground strike assault
UAV,” according to the aviation-news website Alert 5,
citing information from the show.

The twin-propeller Fire Cardinal is around four feet

long, has a six-foot wingspan and weighs around 15
pounds. It includes an electro-optical and infrared
Ford Mustang SUV start
sensor and selects its target using what Alert 5 described vehicles
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as an “intelligent object-detection system.”

Alert 5 did not speculate as to Fire Cardinal’s range, but

it’s roughly the same size as the U.S. Army’s hand-
launched Puma surveillance drone. The propeller-driven
Puma can range as far as 10 miles at an altitude of 500
feet and a maximum speed of around 50 miles per hour.

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A human operator controls a Puma via radio. It’s safe to
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assume the Fire Cardinal, with its own modest range
and performance, features a similar control system.
Ground troops in close proximity to enemy forces could
lob many Fire Cardinals into the air in the hope of
overwhelming the enemy’s short-range air defenses.

That’s the tactic that militant forces in the Middle East

have employed with their own, custom-made suicide PHOTOS: 10 bronze stat
women in NYC by Statue
drones. In January 2018 a swarm of 10 explosives-laden
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small drones, apparently controlled by Syrian rebels,
attacked two Russian bases in western Syria.

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