It’s still a capability unheard of in Europe since the days of the V-Bombers and possibly beyond that mark in terms of range at least.
The more I think about it, I get the impression that the UK at least does not consider strategic reach an incidental byproduct of long endurance. I mean, BAE dropped the word ‘strategic’ in the press release when they announced Corax, the project that gave rise to Taranis is called SUAVE (Strategic Unmanned Air Vehicle Experiment) – the programme’s got strategic written all over it! They’re not even trying to hide the fact, really.
It being strategic doesn’t necessarily mean its got the range of a strategic bomber though as the word is often used to suggest. Let say Taranis does 0.5M @ 30k ft as its most efficient speed to reach its 12 hour endurance. This would give it a range of 4068 miles (6552km) one way, using double that as a measure of a 24 hour endurance gives us 8136 miles (13,104km). Of course combat radius would be far less and we dont know anything about its payload, cruise speeds ect but it’s still a useful comparison against aircraft like Tornado and Typhoon. Of course the actual UCAV if it’s ever put into production could (and probably will) be much longer ranged, since the whole pilotless thing makes it much more practical.
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