KAZAN, June 7. /TASS/. Russia’s new heavy strike drone may reach the stage of state trials in 2018, Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov said on Wednesday.

"After passing the stage of developing an experimental type, they made this model take to the skies and now they are rolling out a development prototype," the deputy defense minister said during his visit to the Simonov experimental design bureau.

"I believe that they will finish this work during this and next year and reach the stage of state trials while the Russian Army will get a new class of an unmanned aerial vehicle," Borisov said.

According to the deputy defense minister, the enterprise won the tender for the development of a heavy drone in tight competition.

"We’ll be considering the issue of state purchases from 2018. We are ready to buy the Zenitsa drone from 2018 and if they complete state trials in 2018 we will also be buying the heavy drone. They are no inferior by their characteristics to the analogs operational in foreign armies," the deputy defense minister said.