It’s reported that on May 21, 2020, with its Flying Loong UAV series, Zhongtian Feilong (Xi’an) Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. achieved an all-round victory in a bid hosted by a unit of the Chinese Army. The company’s competitors in the bid included AVIC 611 Institution, also known as Chengdu Aircraft Industrial (Group) Co., Ltd (“Chengfei” for short) – designer of Wing Loong I and II UAVs, Sichuan Tengdun Technology Co., Ltd. and other industry leaders in China.
According to related sources, this bid from the Chinese army has extremely high requirements for the professional capabilities of each bidder. It requires not only a profound and complete theoretical study of the UAV lineage, but also a wide range of basic data on the full range of independently developed UAV products, as well as analysis of boundary limit parameters of the UAV system of the army, and simulations and deductions to establish corresponding data and evaluation systems.
The success of this bid marks that Zhongtian Feilong’s full lineage of unmanned aerial vehicles has received attention and recognition of Chinese army troops and leaders. In addition, the company’s accumulated operational effectiveness analysis technology, UAV collaborative combat theory, and UAV combat system contribution rate calculation methods have also been highly appreciated by industry experts.
According to introductions to the Flying Loong I drone, this is a large-load long-duration universal unmanned platform: full take-off 3.2 tons, mission load 1.2 tons, cruising time 45 hours, maximum flight speed 320 km/h, lifting limit 8000 meters. It is reported that this advanced aircraft took only one and a half years from projection demonstration to the completion of its first flight. It created a miracle of research and development of the same type of drone at home and abroad.
From the perspective of its performance parameters, it is better than certain parameters of Chengfei’s Wing Loong II UAV: maximum takeoff weight 4.2 tons, plug-in 480 kg, maximum flight speed 370 kilometers per hour, maximum flight altitude 9000 meters, cruising time 20 hours.
Compared to the export star Wing Loong II UAV, the advantages of Flying Loong I include that the aircraft has less built-in equipment and lighter takeoff weight, but its mission load is larger and the cruising time is more than doubled. The advantages of Wing Loong II UAV include larger space, more complete and more advanced equipment, and higher speed. It’s also reported that the development team of Flying Loong I derives from the core team of Rainbow UAV, who left for this private enterprise named Zhongtian Feilong, and such competition has brought China’s drone technology to a higher level.
Another unparalleled advantage of Flying Loong I is its large product family, which forms a system containing large and small UAVs. Apart from the relatively large Flying Loong I, there are also Flying Loong A, B, C, and D UAVs, Tiger Shark UAVs, including multi-axis UAV used by individual soldiers, hand-throw fixed-wing UAV, catapult UAV, etc. These Unmanned aerial vehicles form a more organic combination, making a more complete system, while Chengfei is a bit insufficient in the smaller models and its smallest model is just Wing Loong 1, therefore, it cannot achieve “systematic operation, construction, and production warfare” required by the Chinese military customer.