Killer Drone Construction Begins

Northrop Grumman engi­neers have spent the last cou­ple of years design­ing a killer drone for the Navy. Today, the com­pany announced that it’s start­ing to build the X-​​47B Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems plane. It’s the first attack drone “that can oper­ate from both land bases and air­craft car­ri­ers,” accord­ing to a Northrop press release.
Or, at least, the X-​​47B will be the first, once it’s com­pleted. Putting the pro­to­type robo-​​plane together should take about 18 months. A sec­ond X-​​47 should roll off of the assem­bly line about three to six months after that. And a third… well, we’ll wait and see. Northrop wants the Defense Department to eval­u­ate the first two before it builds another.
The Pentagon is giv­ing Northrop a bil­lion bucks for the three vehi­cles, which are designed to “sup­press enemy air defenses, per­form elec­tronic attack, con­duct intel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance and recon­nais­sance mis­sions, and per­form pre­ci­sion strike attacks,” accord­ing to the com­pany. The drones will each have a pair of 2,000 pound, satellite-​​guided bombs to help in the mis­sions. The mil­i­tary wants to test flights to start by the end of 2007.

June 2nd, 2005 | Drones | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.