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Home » Drones » Air Force’s Secret Drone Program Revealed

Air Force’s Secret Drone Program Revealed

Sharp-​​eyed Nick Cook of Janes has spot­ted a new clas­si­fied UAV pro­gram. He refers to this Pentagon bud­get doc­u­ment which says “the J-​​UCAS pro­gram to split into two sep­a­rate pro­grams: one Air Force clas­si­fied pro­gram and a navy UCAV [unmanned com­bat air vehi­cle] pro­gram”. Some $1.7 bil­lion is to be spent on these devel­op­ments over five years.
The new craft is referred to as Penetrating High Altitude Endurance (PHAE), and is thought to be able to cruise at 70,000–80,000 ft, sim­i­lar to the U-​​2 (Global Hawk has a ceil­ing of 65,000 ft). Penetrating means oper­at­ing over defended ter­ri­tory, so unlike Global Hawk high degree of stealth will be essen­tial. Being derived from the armed J-​​UCAS pro­gram, strike mis­sions and SEAD are also pos­si­ble. Cook says:
One report refers to the air­craft using engines from an inven­tory that has been in stor­age since the 1970s. This almost cer­tainly refers to the General Electric J97-​​GE-​​3 engine for the Teledyne Ryan AQM-​​91 Compass Arrow UAV (a project ter­mi­nated in 1971). In 1998, a NASA paper reported that 24 J97 engines were in stor­age at the agency’s Ames research centre…the J97 was rated at around 25 kN and the new UAV is prob­a­bly a twin-​​engine design.
aqm91a.jpgCompass Arrow, oth­er­wise known as the Ryan Model 154 Firefly, weighed in at 5,000 lbs with a wingspan of 48 feet and car­ried a pay­load of over 300 lb. It was very stealthy for its day, with rounded fuse­lage and inward-​​canted tail­fins, with a coat­ing of RAM (radar absorb­ing mate­r­ial) to reduce radar returns. The engine was mounted above the fuse­lage to min­i­mize the infrared sig­na­ture.
Compass Arrow could cruise at 80,000 feet, and was intended to be used over China. For polit­i­cal rea­sons it was moth­balled with­out ever being used.
Compass Arrow Arrow was single-​​engined, so a twin-​​engined PHAE is likely to be some­what big­ger.
The PHAE con­cept has been stud­ied before , with a view to roles includ­ing coun­ter­ing WMD, attack­ing fixed and mobile tar­gets, and sup­press­ing air defences. Its not clear what weapons might be used from this sort of alti­tude, though a guided kinetic pen­e­tra­tor would make quite an impact from six­teen miles up. A stealth­ier approach would be for PHAE to act as a moth­er­ship for smaller UAVs (such as the 100 lb Dominator) killer UAV or minia­ture muni­tions. The US Navy has already exper­i­mented with launch­ing the FINDER UAV from a Predator drone for close-​​in recon­nai­sance, as well as the minia­ture CICADA Close-​​in Covert Autonomous Disposable Aircraft which would be dropped in large num­bers for elec­tronic attack.
The endurance of PHAE will be lim­ited by fuel sup­ply; seri­ous long-​​endurance drones with mis­sion times mea­sured in weeks or months will be solar pow­ered. High-​​altitude long-​​endurance drones will find many more appli­ca­tions in both the civil­ian and mil­i­tary worlds — theres more on this topic in my book Weapons Grade.
– David Hambling
UPDATE Check out the new Special Report on Weapons & Warfare on the New Scientist mag­a­zine web­site, a feast of dozens of weapons tech arti­cles with an instant expert overview by a DefenseTech regular.

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April 23rd, 2006 | Drones | 31669 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/04/23/air-forces-secret-drone-program-revealed/Air+Force%27s+Secret+Drone+Program+Revealed2006-04-23+11%3A45%3A15jason You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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  1. Charles says:
    April 23, 2006 at 8:00 pm

    Digging into the Skunk Works book again (ugh, at the risk of sound­ing dull) indi­cates that they’d tested shoot­ing drones into China for the pur­pose of mon­i­tor­ing their nuclear pro­gram. Of course, the drone was sup­posed to be picked up before it dropped into the ocean and this rarely worked out, thus the project got canned. There was also use of the SR as a moth­er­ship to launch drones, with the loss of one SR dur­ing test­ing (lead­ing to the project being canned).
    Lots of stuff that we’d tried before and are look­ing at again, armed with bet­ter tech than the last time around.

    Reply
  2. Grant says:
    April 23, 2006 at 8:24 pm

    Let’s not switch it to full auto until we’re sure it can’t think for itself, OK? (With apolo­gies to James Cameron)

    Reply
  3. DS says:
    April 24, 2006 at 11:07 am

    pic­tures pic­tures PICTURES. we want some PICTUERES OF THIS THING!

    Reply
  4. Darren says:
    April 24, 2006 at 6:36 pm

    Sounds inter­est­ing, and a UAV of this nature would cer­tainly be exceed­ingly use­ful. South Africa’s Denel has been work­ing on some­thing sim­i­lar, called Seraph, for a num­ber of years, but a lack of fund­ing appears to have stalled devel­op­ment of late.

    Reply
  5. HEXJUMPER says:
    August 18, 2006 at 1:06 pm

    how to go stealthy mis­lead­ing the observers ?
    just make your top-​​secret a/​c look­ing like an
    ordi­nary /​ known air­craft !!
    –giant B-​​2 Vs nor­mal B-​​2
    –giant F-​​117 Vs nor­mal F-​​117
    also…
    why should U.A.V.‘s always be big craft ?
    the smaller the U.A.V.‘s the more dif­fi­cult it is to detect.
    and…
    what about an air­craft with the entire skin of
    MIRRORtiles !
    it would be prac­ti­caly invis­i­ble since only the reflec­tions of pass­ing scenery in all direc­tions
    would show on the air­craft. (clouds,ground…)
    for sur…
    whe have seen noth­ing yet :) )

    Reply
  6. boeing777-200LR says:
    December 20, 2006 at 9:32 pm

    its a lit­tle off topic, but i have a few ques­tions–
    1. does the B2 bomber look at all, made by humans? because i have scoured the inter­net and have found some dick­head con­spir­acists say­ing that aliens helped deve­l­ope the B2. im not say­ing it is but if you look at it, it does look a lit­tle sci­ence fiction(the B2)
    2. why the hell havent the US started cre­at­ing a full on UCAV fighter (like the one off the movie STEALTH) that can do any­thing the F35 can do.
    3. fol­low­ing up HEXJUMPER, i cant see why they cre­ate the UAVs, and the UCAVs as big as a damn 737! wouldnt it be stealth-​​ier to make them small and sleek, not big and bulgy!

    Reply
  7. spincycle says:
    December 30, 2006 at 2:33 pm

    Hexjumper:
    Mirrors reflect spe­cific wave­lent­gths of EMR (i.e., visual light). They don’t help at all in the radar spec­trum.
    boeing777:
    Yes, it does. It looks like it was designed using sound sci­etific prin­ci­ples, mea­sured on Earth, by humans, using the­o­ries devel­oped by humans after the tra­di­tional evidence-​​hypothesis-​​test-​​revise-​​repeat tech­nique that is at the core of the sci­en­tific process.

    Reply
  8. DITBOY says:
    December 13, 2008 at 6:05 pm

    While it would be nice to have long-​​range, highly sen­sative UAVs that were small, the tech­nol­ogy isn’t there yet.
    UAVs have to be large enough to carry their sen­sor pay­load and an energy sup­ply. Their size, then, is based on being large enough to cre­ate enough lift to carry the pay­load and fuel for a long endourance mis­sion.
    Radar and electro-​​optical cam­eras with suf­fi­cient power or clar­ity aren’t small enough for a small UAV yet.
    Energy sources would either be bat­ter­ies (heavy) or avi­a­tion fuel (also heavy in suf­fi­cient quan­tity for a long mis­sion). Even if solar power was used to power the craft, a suf­fi­cient num­ber of “solar pan­els” would still make for a larger air­craft.
    So, micro, stealth, long-​​range UAVs sound per­fect, be we ain’t there yet.
    Just two cents.…

    Reply

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