UK Stealth Drone Unveiled

The Brits want to get out of the tra­di­tional fighter jet busi­ness, and start putting robots in the cock­pits, instead of blokes.
After the F-​​35 Joint Strike Fighter is done, the Ministry of Defence is look­ing to build unmanned com­bat aer­ial vehi­cles, or UCAVs, accord­ing to Jane’s International Defence Review. But devel­op­ing killer drones takes time. So Brits are work­ing now with the American mil­i­tary on a “Project Churchill… an effort that is focused on the joint, air­borne com­mand and con­trol” of the UCAVs.“
The drone pic­tured here — called the Corax — is one of two robo-​​planes that the Ministry will use as plat­forms for their UCAV devel­op­ment. (Jane’s doesn’t men­tion whether the can­cel­la­tion of the American killer drone effort will affect the project. One sus­pects it might.)
“The jet-​​powered Corax had per­formed sev­eral suc­cess­ful flights as early as 2004 tak­ing off and land­ing under com­puter con­trol,” New Scientist notes. “The air­craft is curved in a man­ner than resem­bles exist­ing ‘stealth” air­craft. The spe­cial shape of such craft is designed to defeat radar detec­tion by reflect­ing radar away from a radar sen­sor instead of back at it. Corax also lacks a con­ven­tional tail, which should make it more aero­dy­namic but also more dif­fi­cult to con­trol.“
All of which reminds Jane’s of the infa­mously secre­tive DarkStar stealth drone, can­celled in 1999. It also had “a tail-​​less con­fig­u­ra­tion, and a long-​​span unswept wing mounted at the rear of a short body section.”

However, there are impor­tant dif­fer­ences. The body sec­tion is straight-​​edged and pointed rather than being a half-​​disc shape. The wing is tapered and mounted rel­a­tively fur­ther for­ward, and there are two pitch-​​control sur­faces on each side of the exhaust. This avoids one prob­lem with the DarkStar, which was the lim­ited pitch author­ity avail­able from the win trailing-​​edge sur­faces: a fac­tor in the loss of the first DarkStar in April 1996. Compared with DarkStar, which was designed with an empha­sis on a low side-​​on sig­na­ture — match­ing its side-​​looking sen­sors — Corax is opti­mised for all-​​round stealth.

(Big ups: JQP, SH)

January 19th, 2006 | Drones | 17804 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/01/19/uk-stealth-drone-unveiled/UK+Stealth+Drone+Unveiled2006-01-19+12%3A27%3A11murdoc You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.