Anybody remember the Unmanned Combat Armed Rotorcraft (aka, UCAR)?
UCAR was one of those futuristic concept vehicles that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (aka, DARPA) swoons over until the Army (aka, army) sees the bill, and then — poof — the program dies.
Well, it’s back — kind of.
When UCAR got the budget axe about two years ago, there were two teams involved. There was Lockheed Martin offering an unmanned version of the Bell Helicopter 407, with a very cool propulsive anti-torque feature (think vectored-thrust but on a helicopter). And there was Northrop Grumman offering the Kaman Aerospace K-MAX, which has inter-meshing rotors to solve that pesky (for helicopters) anti-torque issue.
Two years later, Lockheed Martin announced last week that it’s getting back into the unmanned armed rotorcraft business, but with a twist: they’re switching partners. Gone is the Bell 407, which, goodness knows, is in enough trouble right now.
Onboard is (drum-roll …) their former competitor: the Kaman Aerospace K-MAX. Lockheed Martin’s press release says:
“The K-MAX has proven its capabilities, at very high altitudes and in hot environments, and has demonstrated more than twelve hours of continuous flight operations as a UAS. Working with Lockheed Martin, the K MAX will realize even greater potential and hopefully serve our forces in a capacity to reduce the burden on our ground and aviation forces.
Not surprisingly, Lockheed Martin’s press release omits any direct references to the aborted UCAR program, except to mention that some of the technologies were developed under previous DARPA programs. (Yeah, we know.)
A very puzzling question this new teaming arrangement creates is — to put it simply — why? No obvious market exists for a highly autonomous and armed (always a troubling combination), unmanned helicopter. Perhaps Lockheed Martin can pitch it as an advanced alternative to the Northrop Grumman MQ-8B Fire Scout, but to whom? There is no sign that the Fire Scout’s two customers — the army and the navy — would consider dumping Northrop Grumman for a more unproven alternative.
In other words, your guess is as good as mine.
– Stephen Trimble .
You said “No obvious market exists for a highly autonomous and armed (always a troubling combination), unmanned helicopter.“
I’m most curious why you should be any more troubled by the armed heli than the Predator? I seriously doubt its attack authority will be any greater than the Predator.
Although the Kaman may not be the chosen helicopter in the future, why is there no obvious market? The heli can be forward deployed without a runway as the predator requires. It can be quickly refueled and back in the air. It can hover for the best continous coverage. And it can perhaps replace pilots in aircraft like Apaches and observation aircraft. Certainly there’s a need?
Though it may not ultimately be chosen for such a role, the Kaman has some advantages — its more stable, but more importantly, it doesn’t use a tail rotor. The tail rotor takes extra power and is dangerous on the ground. The Kaman sends all its power to lifting. Its better in the hot/high conditions. Its a great platform thats been around for a while. Its even got the slender profile of an attack helicopter.
Reefdiver, thanks for the question. Note that I use the terms “highly autonomous” AND “armed”. It’s the combination that is the problem. The Predator is armed, but no one — especially the human pilot and human sensor operator — is going to call it a “highly autonomous” aircraft. When was the last time you saw the military buy an unmanned aircraft that claims it can fly around, find targets and shoot them with little, if any, human intervention? That’s the distinction I was making.
I clicked your “trouble” link, about the Bell ARH…is that a bad thing? didn’t the BlackHawks test flight crash, and the people on board were ok, just like the ARH pilots, and the blackhawk won the contract for its “survivability”.
anywho…back to the UCAR, I would like to see the prototype…do they have any pics of it yet…or is it still on th drawing board?
BTW, you should replace your pic (which has nothing to do with this article)…with this one.
http://www.aviationnow.com/media/images/awst_images/large/AW_09_06_2004_908_L.jpg
Do some more Googleing about the status of the ARH program and I think you’ll get it. That link was probably not the best one to use.
What comes around, goes around.… We had K-Max on board the USS Carl Vinson in 1996 for about half of a deployment.
Flown by a civilian pilot, the brass wanted to see if it could replace the H-46. It looked ok inflight, couldn’t carry the same weight (nets, etc). It participated in a few vert-reps and un-reps, kinda cool to watch, but never saw ‘em again after their trial run.
What I care the most is if the Helicopter can keep himself up & running after a dozen of rocket launchers fired at it. “That is the most important and basic feature of all.”
The significance of the Kmax is its service cieling which is 10,000 feet higher than its nearest competitor. Even the 1960’s Kaman copters could have summited Mount Everest long ago. The lack of torsinal rigidity of rotor blades is used as a hinge and stabilized with an outboard control surface on the blade. Thus the design achieves the lowest disk loadings. Hence it can resupply high altitude locations under hot conditions… such as Afghanistan. Resupply has been the proposed use of this automated chopper. The intermeshing rotors pack two into the smallest airframe with some savings say 8% on an antitorqe rotor. Many helicopters maximum altitide is limited by the size of the tail rotor for control. This is not a limit with the two rotor design. The accuracy of control has not always been as good as a tail rotor, however