In Germany, a joint venture to produce the Ukrainian Bars drone-missile will begin operating in September. The drone’s developer, whose name has not been disclosed, said in an interview with RBC-Ukraine.
According to the production plans, the first products from the joint venture will be supplied to Ukraine’s Defence Forces from 10 October.
According to the developer, the drone has a range of up to 1,000 km, a speed of more than 700 km/h, and can carry a warhead of up to 60 kg.
The developer noted that work on Bars began in 2023. It was designed as a modular platform, allowing it to be used for different missions. He added that from the first basic prototype to the current version, the drone has undergone more than 40 upgrades and iterations.
“In other words, our core modularity has enabled Bars to have three main categories of use: DeepStrike, ‘mid-strike’ and ‘front-strike’. It is precisely this modularity that has made it possible to balance fuel volume and warhead weight, and to create several variants of a single drone,” he said.
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It is stated that at the final stage of flight, the operator can control the drone manually or hand over control to an optical terminal guidance system. The developer added that Bars is currently more than 74 per cent localised. According to him, at present the only important component purchased abroad is the turbojet engine.
“Without exaggeration, we source them from all over the world, but an engine of our own production has already passed its final tests,” the developer said.
As a reminder, Germany had previously considered the possibility of purchasing Bars drones.