Compared with traditional aircrafts, unmanned aerial vehicles have certain advantages only in the flight life. As long as they can obtain enough flight kinetic energy, the long endurance of unmanned aerial vehicles can be realized. To this end, the United States has specially built a solar UAV, which is to use the obtained solar energy to provide power endurance for the UAV, and solar power vehicle is the same principle. The solar unmanned aerial vehicle called “Skyhawk” took 14 months to build, and its maximum wingspan reached 42 meters, exceeding the wingspan of sounding 737 Airbus, with a total weight of about 400 kilograms. It is known that the flying height of “Skyhawk” is 200-30,000 meters high, which is equivalent to the current military fighter. With the supplement of solar power, “Skyhawk” can fly continuously for 3 months without landing, and can maintain Internet communication with the ground.
According to the official disclosure of Tianying’s design, the current positioning of this UAV is quite swing, which can be understood as a dual-use UAV, because its biggest purpose is to connect with the ground through its own continuous empty time, and set up a system that can cover high-speed data transmission worldwide, including any remote areas without network coverage. Obviously, this function is possible for both military and civilian use, which is similar to setting up a “satellite” system in the atmosphere, but this project obviously needs a huge number of construction support. Of course, for this kind of unmanned aerial vehicle that can fly nearly infinitely, similar technologies in our country have been realized. It is worth mentioning that currently only three countries in the world, China, America and Britain, have the ability to develop such unmanned aerial vehicles.
It is known that China’s solar UAV is named Qi Mingxing, and its wingspan is about 20 meters. The airframe adopts carbon fiber composite materials, which has the characteristics of long-range flight. Because the aircraft flies in the near space 20 to 100 kilometers from the ground, the solar panels covered on the wings can convert the absorbed solar energy into kinetic energy, and it can be unfolded in the sky for several months, the flight lasted for several years or even decades. Even at night, the previously reserved solar energy will continue to fly. Obviously, the flight height of this UAV is beyond the reach of fighters from all over the world, and it is also beyond the interception range of ground-to-air missiles from all countries, so there is no need to worry about being intercepted by enemy planes or missiles when performing the mission.
