China started the building of its first low-altitude pilotless airplane base in Nanchang, capital city of Southern China's Jiangxi Province.
Xinhua.net reported that the Nanchang government invests a total of 1.38 billion yuan to construct the scientific industrial park that occupies 400 mu, or 26.7 hectares, of land.
The base will be a large integrated aviation electronic industrialized base to research, devise, manufacture and sell low altitude pilotless airplanes.
It is said that after completion, the base will manufacture over 600 pilotless airplanes a year, worth 1.5 billion yuan.
The pilotless airplanes can fly in various weather conditions and carry out many kinds of missions with different equipment, including optical video cameras, infrared cameras, three-dimensional laser radars, aerial scanners, thermal-imager, wireless transmitters and other devices.
Therefore, the pilotless planes will be conducive to China's environmental protection, disaster prevention and reduction, ecological construction, construction of information modernization, education, experiments, and etc.
(CRI February 28, 2008)