By Andrea Hargraves 
There are already more than 500 days of war in Ukraine, and recently the tone of the debate has increased due to the US sending cluster bombs. Ukraine will also have drones with unique technology that look like planes… and are made in Portuguese.
The war in Ukraine: Tekever AR3 has powerful technology…
This month, an unmanned aerial vehicle completely developed and produced in Portugal by Tekever, which is considered one of the most advanced in the world in its class, according to CNN, arrived in Ukraine.
The new Tekever AR3 has a wide range of cameras and optical or thermal sensors, which guarantee high-resolution image capture in real time, but not only. The AR3 could include industrial-aperture radar, which allows you to see objects invisible to the naked eye, company CEO Ricardo Mendez told CNN.
AR3 is a system developed to be extremely flexible in the field. These systems manage to achieve in a very small dimension - they are still very small systems - a huge set of capabilities
The AR3 has an autonomy of 16 hours, a length of 1.7 meters, and a wingspan of 3.5 metres. They almost look like small planes, but they weigh only 25 kilos. These drones can reach a cruising speed of 75 to 90 kilometers per hour and a maximum altitude of 3,600 meters, within a radius of 100 kilometers.
But Tekever has a more powerful model (it is not going to Ukraine yet). We are talking about the AR5 which has an autonomy of 20 hours and can reach speeds of up to 100 km / h. The wingspan of this model is 7.3 metres. It is also known that Tekever is already working on an ARX which should be available in 2025 and will be more powerful than the AR5. This decision by Ukraine to acquire drones in Portugal is not the responsibility of the government.
TEKEVER is a Portuguese business group created in Portugal in 2001, in Lisbon, by former students of the Instituto Superior Técnico, whose activity focuses on the development of technology, products and services in the fields of information and communication technology, aeronautics, space, defense and protection.