The US Army is testing a solar-powered drone that can fly for months

Drones are one of the most effective and promising military technologies. Unsurprisingly, the US Army is paying a lot of attention to this, and its Horus A drone is a great demonstration of just how versatile drones can be.

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Often the capabilities of the drone depend on how long it can stay in the air. One of the promising technologies for increasing this time is the use of solar batteries.

American defense contractor AeroVironment (AV) has announced the testing of the Horus A, one such stunning solar-powered UAV. This drone is capable of carrying up to 70 kilograms of payload in the stratosphere with 1.5 kW of available power.

Horus A incorporates improvements in all areas of aircraft design and avionics and offers unique features such as additional autonomy for increased mission flexibility and several backup systems to support the mission.

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Horus A received airworthiness approval from the US Army and a special FAA certificate of airworthiness, allowing for flight testing in national airspace.

During the test flight, the drone demonstrated the ability to transport cargo and transmit data in real time. The drone also demonstrated the ability to maneuver effectively in adverse turbulent weather conditions. It has landed safely and is now ready for further testing.

The Horus A beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) satellite radio, robust avionics and datalink package will enable this platform to fill critical gaps in defense capabilities such as persistent communications&rsquo ;communication and network expansion, guaranteed positioning, navigation and synchronization (APNT), sounding, etc.

Many of these capabilities can enable a group of smaller unmanned systems such as the Switchblade 600 (Ukraine is among the operators of this type of drone ), to be the most effective on the battlefield.