Lockheed Martin may be experiencing technical problems in its classified stealth reconnaissance unmanned air vehicle programme.
The UAV has been developed by Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works at Palmdale, California. Demonstrators have been flying for at least three years and the system was reportedly deployed during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The UAV is medium-altitude, medium-to-long-range jet-powered vehicle with limited endurance. The airframe is a blended wing-body design with no tail surfaces. With the programme remaining deep within the black world, no specific details are available. But well-placed sources indicate it is performing below expectations compared with unclassified UAV projects such as the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems MQ-1 Predator.
The Lockheed Martin development team is understood to have been drawn extensively from the company's cancelled Darkstar stealthy UAV programme, including personnel working on the flight control system - an area that proved a major source of problems during the Darkstar flight-test programme.
The Darkstar UAV was designated as a Tier III Minus system under the former US military UAV architecture. The Tier III Minus requirement was for a very high-altitude, long-range, high-speed, deep-penetration surveillance UAV system with an 8h endurance. The US Air Force's Global Hawk was characterised as a Tier II Plus system under the same architecture, while the Predator was regarded as a Tier II system.
Based on that architecture, Lockheed Martin's new UAV would be classified as a Tier II Minus, or a full level below the original Darkstar capability targets and with significantly less endurance than Predator.
Darkstar first flew in March 1996, but the demonstrator was destroyed in a crash a month later. A second air vehicle flew for the first time in June 1998. The programme was cancelled formally in January 1999, ostensibly because of problems with air vehicle control and rapidly escalating programme costs.
PETER LA FRANCHI / WASHINGTON DC
Source: Flight International
