China has deployed its unmanned aircraft to restore communication service and survey conditions in several villages in Henan province which were severely affected by recent heavy rains and floods.
Upon an urgent request from the Ministry of Emergency Management, AVIC Chengdu Unmanned Aerial Vehicle System, a subsidiary of the Aviation Industry Corp of China, started on Tuesday night to prepare a Wing Loong 2H disaster-assistance drone for signal relay and aerial survey operations.
At 2:22 pm Wednesday, ground controllers operated the drone to take off at an airport in Guizhou province's Anshun. It flew nearly 1,200 kilometers and arrived in the airspace over Henan province's Mihe township at 6:21 pm.
The aircraft then began to fly around the flood-stricken township to provide communication signals to mobile phone users in the China Mobile network as local residents' communications links with outside had been cut off for a certain period of time due to the destruction of infrastructure.
After the makeshift communications network was established, China Mobile sent a text message to local users to tell them to seize the opportunity to report their situation to outside authorities and to contact their family members.
During the five-hour relay operation, the drone provided phone or internet services to a total of 3,572 residents and generated data traffic of nearly 2,100 megabytes. At its busiest time, as many as 648 users were connected with outside places through the craft, according to a statement from AVIC, a State-owned aircraft conglomerate.
The aircraft was then ordered to use its optical devices and radar to detect and map devastation conditions in some other places in Henan.
Around 2:30 am on Thursday, it finished all tasks and began to fly back. It landed at the same airport in Anshun at 6:15 am, according to ground controllers.
The Wing Loong 2H is a civilian variant of AVIC's Wing Loong II combat drone, one of the best of its kind in the world.
A Wing Loong II has a length of 11 meters and a wingspan of 20.5 meters. It can stay in the air for 20 hours with a maximum speed of 370 kilometers per hour.
The combat drone is able to carry up to 12 laser-guided bombs or missiles, which can have a total weight of 480 kilograms.
