Studies will lay groundwork for fully capable UCAV system to be introduced by 2025
EADS Military Aircraft has launched studies of an unmanned reconnaissance air vehicle (URAV) demonstrator to support its “modular approach” to acquiring technology for an unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) that it believes could be built around 2020-25.
The URAV will by 2010 “create a platform for UAV technology, but also a platform for mission capabilities”, says senior vice-president programmes Peter Gutsmiedl. The project will enable the European company to demonstrate integration of different sensor types, and the multi-mission approach with a single platform is also expected to reduce life-cycle expenses, Gutsmiedl says.
The URAV/UCAV platform would be optimised to cruise at 40,000ft (12,200m) and perform a high-low-high mission profile with “medium to high agility”, and have an endurance of 2-6h.
EADS’s Spanish arm is separately participating in the French-led Neuron UCAV project.
EADS Military Aircraft is meanwhile upgrading its radar signature measurement facilities to aid its development of second-generation stealth technology for low-observable UAVs. Head of signature technology Jürgen Kruse says the stealth characteristics of future vehicles must be improved by a “factor of 10”, which will require “new techniques, simulation processes and measuring facilities”.
Such designs will also feature tuneable optical and infrared signatures. “You have to adapt your optical brightness to the sky,” Kruse says.
The refurbished former Rheinmetall Defence Electronic indoor test facility at Lemwerder, north of Bremen, will be able to accommodate test articles up to 12m in length (up from the current 5m limit) and weighing 2.25t (4,960lb).
“We think we will complete the build-up of the measurement range around November this year,” says Kruse.
Military Aircraft is the largest of the five units that make up EADS Defence and Security Systems and accounts for 30% of the division’s revenues, more than half of which is derived from military air systems integration.
Just under one-third of the unit’s revenue comes from its services operation, while the remainder is accrued from aerostructures work, including on Airbus civil programmes.
Source: Flight International
