The Wing Loong II that flew for the first time Monday can carry up to 480 kilograms (1,058 pounds) of bombs and missiles, tucking six under each wing, according to information viewed Wednesday on the Aviation Industry Corporation of China’s microblog.

The drone has a wingspan of 20.5 meters (67 feet 3 inches), can stay airborne up to 20 hours and fly at a maximum altitude of 9,000 meters (29,500 feet), according to the company known as AVIC.

The drone’s successful test flight “allows China to follow the U.S. in producing a new generation of integrated surveillance and combat unmanned aerial vehicles,” the company said in the microblog posting.

State media say the drone should become a leading export item for China following the success of the original Wing Loong that has been sold to a number of countries, including several in the Middle East. Along with inexpensive fighter jets and naval patrol boats, drones are a high-tech standout item among China’s substantial exports of more workaday weaponry such as assault rifles and rocket launchers.

While both the Wing Loong II’s advertised payload and cruising altitude fall well short compared with the MQ-9 Reaper in service with the U.S. military, it is expected to be highly competitive on price.

While AVIC didn’t provide the cost of a Wing Loong II, its predecessor, with a payload of only about 100 kilograms (220 pounds), reportedly sold for about $1 million each, a fraction of the Reaper’s $14.75 million price tag.

The Alamogordo Daily News reports that the 6th Attack Squadron at Holloman Air Force Base is transitioning to the MQ-9 Reaper from the MQ-1 Predator, some of which remain in operational status.

A Predator will be put on static display at Heritage Park on the base, which held a retirement ceremony Monday to mark the transition.

The missile-firing MQ-1 has seen combat in Bosnia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Africa and other locations.

The Holloman squadron has trained hundreds of pilots and senor operators since being activated in 2009 to provide Predator operators their initial qualification training for the aircraft.

Rockwell Collins on Monday is introducing Coalescence at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) in Orlando, Florida. Two demos will be showcased at the company’s booth: an F/A-18 “ready room” where pilots prepare for a flight from an aircraft carrier, and a ship bridge simulation.

“The advantage would be to have a very small footprint on an aircraft carrier” that would allow F/A-18 pilots at sea to prepare for and practice missions before they step into the cockpit and execute, Gibbs said.

“It would be a cost-reduced, highly improved fidelity environment to what exists today,” he said. “What that would look like today is you might be in that same cockpit looking at a computer monitor, not really immersed in your aircraft.”

The system can be configured several ways. One method is to mate an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset with existing simulation equipment, and pipe data from the simulator into the headset. At I/ITSEC, Rockwell Collins is showing how Coalescence works with an Oculus Rift and typical military hardware not hooked up to a simulator — items like a cockpit, displays and controls — which are integrated with the company’s core simulation architecture and a synthetic environment.

According to Gibbs, the “secret sauce” is how the software figures out what elements from the real world to bring into the virtual world and how to solve latency issues that may arise. For instance, in a situation where a person is holding a ball and then throws it to the user, the user needs to be able to see that ball and catch it without the simulated visuals lagging behind.

The technology isn’t quite ready for full-flight simulators yet, but it’s quickly approaching the resolution and fidelity needed, Gibbs said.

” Moore’s lawis working here pretty hard, so it won’t be long. It will be a couple of years for sure,” he said, referring to the co-founder of Intel, Gordon Moore, who anticipated that computing would increase in power and decrease in relative cost at an exponential pace.

Rockwell Collins plans to make Coalescence available in 2017, but the company is still looking for its first customer. Gibbs believes it could be adapted for a variety of missions including joint tactical air control, dismounted soldier, driver training and even some rotary-wing applications. But although the company is considering proposing it for several programs of record, it has already run into a problem — the technology has outpaced the currently defined requirements.

Gibbs summarized his argument to the US military as: “Let’s identify a set of requirements that satisfies the training needs assessment for the program, and enable those to be satisfied by different and new technology.”

One selling point could be the cost. The company is still solidifying its cost model, but Gibbs said it will be “orders of magnitude less” than the $6 million to $10 million price tag of most flight simulators.