$1B FOR NAVY’S KILLER DRONE

The Pentagon’s mad sci­en­tists have given Northrop Grumman a bil­lion bucks on to develop the Navy’s killer drone.
The X-​​47B unmanned com­bat aer­ial vehi­cle (that’s a lit­tle Photoshopped mock-​​up to the right) is one of a pair of pilot­less fighter planes Darpa would like to see built for the Defense Department. But, unlike Boeing’s X-​​45C, the Northrop drone “is designed to autonomously take off and land on an air­craft car­rier, whose run­way is about 300 yards long,” the Los Angeles Times notes.
“Under the newly awarded agree­ment, the Northrop Grumman team will con­duct a five year effort to design, develop and demon­strate a min­i­mum of three full-​​scale, flight-​​worthy air vehi­cles and three mis­sion con­trol sys­tems,” accord­ing to a Darpa press release.

The sys­tem will include inte­grated sen­sors, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, nav­i­ga­tion equip­ment and low observ­abil­ity fea­tures, along with a com­mon oper­at­ing sys­tem to meet mis­sion capa­bil­ity objec­tives estab­lished by the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy. The tar­geted mis­sions encom­pass sup­pres­sion of enemy air defenses, pen­e­trat­ing sur­veil­lance in denied enemy air­space, and pre­ci­sion strike − all from both land and air­craft car­rier bases. The sys­tems objec­tives include an air vehi­cle com­bat radius of 1,500 nau­ti­cal miles with a weapons pay­load of 4,500 pounds, elec­tronic warn­ing sys­tem and an inte­grated syn­thetic aper­ture radar. The vehi­cles are designed to sur­vive in a high threat envi­ron­ment and fea­ture beyond-​​line-​​of-​​sight net­work con­nec­tiv­ity for global operations.

“X-​​47B flight demon­stra­tions will begin in 2007,” Darpa tells us, “at a West Coast test site.”

August 20th, 2004 | Drones | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.