Chung Hsiang UAV

This post is essentially the English version of the previous post on November 24.

Chung Hsiang UAV on October 10

One of the new weapons showcased at this year’s military parade on October 10 was the Chung Hsiang UAV, developed by Chung Shang Institute of Science and Technology (CSIST). The two UAV on display were stenciled “Chung Hsiang 001” and “Chung Hsiang 002” (in Chinese) respectively. A local military magazine referred to them as Chung Hsiang III, although I was not able to find any reference to this designation on any official documents. Nonetheless, since this UAV is considerably different from the Chung Hsiang II, which was revealed to the public during the Taoyuan Aerospace Festival in 2004, let’s just refer to them as such.

Chung Hsiang II displayed at the Taoyuan Aerospace Festival

A distinguishing feature of the Chung Hsiang II is the gull wing a la blended wing body. On the other hand, the configuration of the Chung Hsiang III is rather conventional. In fact, I think it looks quite similar to the Kestrel I, developed by another division of CSIST. I have no idea why CSIST changed the design.

Kestrel I UAV

Although it has been more than three years since the Chung Hsiang II was first displayed in public, very little has been written about it. The specifications given at Taoyuan Aerospace Festival have only seven lines in toal:

The earliest news article that I could find on the Military News Agency website was written on September 3, 1999:

… A UAV developed indigenously by CSIST made a forced landing and was damaged during a flight test on September 3. … With a wingspan of 19 feet, the UAV is 15 feet in length and 5 feet in height. It takes off and lands on wheels. Main features include within-line-of-sight remote control, daytime photo reconnaissance, realtime data transmission, and long endurance. …

The article did not mention the name of the UAV. However, according to the reports by Liberty Times and United Daily on September 4, the UAV had been christened Chung Hsiang by the Vice President Lien on June 27 of the same year. The two papers reported that four prototypes had been built and the one involved in the accident was numbered 003. However, both papers said that the UAV caught fire after it crashed, which seemed more serious than was reported by the Military News Agency. Moreover, the two newspapers both quoted that the UAV weighed 950 lbs and was 6.5 meters in length and 8 meters in width. These figures were larger than those reported by the Military News Agency. Was the Agency providing misinformation?

It is worth noting that United Daily published a photo of the UAV provided by CSIST. The UAV in the picture looked almost the same as the one displayed at Taoyuan Aerospace Festival. The most significant difference is the landing gear: The one shown on United Daily has the main landing gear in the shape of an inverted V and the torque scissors link on the nose gear facing forward. Such a configuration could be seen in a poster shown at Taoyuan Aerospace Festival (look for the yellow circle in the second picture of the Chung Hsiang II in this post):

I guess the aspect ratio of the original was changed when printing the poster and so it looks distored. With the help of photo editing software, we have a picture of better quality:

The name Chung Hsiang was finally quoted by the Military News Agency in an article dated December 4, 1999. The article even referred to the UAV specifically as Chung Hsiang II. In addition, the dimensions given by this article were different from those in its September 3 article but consistent with those reported by Liberty Times and United Daily previously.

… According to CSIST, the Chung Hsiang II began its flight test at CCK AFB in February. It has good short take-off and landing capability. The wingspan is 25 feet, the length 19 feet, and the height 6 feet. It is an autonomous UAV navigating by satellites. It is equipped with two encrypted data links. The reconaissance system is capable of target searching and positioning, day or night. The images can be transmitted in real time to ground control stations, thanks to its high-speed processor and data links. …

Now that there is Chung Hsiang II, there must have been a predecessor Chung Hsiang I. Anybody has information?