Saqr a line of

Unmanned aerial vehicle An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without any human pilot, crew, or passengers on board. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), which includes adding a ground-based controller ...

s produced by the

King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST; ar, مدينة الملك عبدالعزيز للعلوم والتقنية) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is an organization established in 1977 as the Saudi Arabian National Center for Science & ...

for the government of

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the A ...

. , three models had been developed: Saqr 2, Saqr 3 and Saqr 4. All three models are manufactured from

fiberglass Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass (Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass cloth ...

and carbon composite material, making them lightweight and stealthy. The Saudi government has developed the craft for research purposes, and the units are equipped with cameras for

aerial photography Aerial photography (or airborne imagery) is the taking of photographs from an aircraft or other airborne platforms. When taking motion pictures, it is also known as aerial videography. Platforms for aerial photography include fixed-wing aircra ...

. According to Prince

Turki bin Saud bin Mohammed Chagatai (چغتای, ''Čaġatāy''), also known as ''Turki'', Eastern Turkic, or Chagatai Turkic (''Čaġatāy türkīsi''), is an extinct Turkic literary language that was once widely spoken across Central Asia and remained the shared literar ...

, the Saqr-1 has a range of more than 2,500 km and can remain airborne for more than 24 hours. The UAV flies at an average altitude of 20,000 feet. It features a

Ka band The Ka band (pronounced as either "kay-ay band" or "ka band") is a portion of the microwave part of the electromagnetic spectrum defined as frequencies in the range 26.5–40 gigahertz (GHz), i.e. wavelengths from slightly over one centim ...

satellite communications system. These weapons are Chinese AR-1 laser-guided missile and FT-9 guided bomb. The units were first developed in 2012 with a total of 38 built .

Variants

;Saqr 1 السعودية تكشف عن طائرتها بدون طيار صقر1.
BBC Arabic، نشر في 4 أبريل 2018، دخل في 8 أبريل 2018. ;Saqr 2: ;Saqr 3: ;Saqr 4:

References

Sources

* Unmanned aerial vehicles of Saudi Arabia {{UAV-stub