FOUR COMPANIES HAVE been awarded three-month, $300,000 US Air Force contracts to begin work on the Future Air-craft Technology Enhancement (FATE) unmanned, subscale fighter demonstrator. Under the study contracts, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, McDonnell Douglas and Northrop Grumman will determine which aerodynamic, flight-control, subsystem and structures technologies should be incorporated in the FATE vehicle for flight testing around 2001.
The demonstrator is part of the Fixed Wing Vehicle (FWV) technology-development effort, which involves the US Air Force, Navy, NASA, industry and academia. The FWV team is examining technologies for future fighter/attack, airlift/patrol/bomber and other classes of aircraft. Reducing cost is the dominant requirement.
The FATE vehicle will be used to flight-test technologies for fighter/attack aircraft, says Greg Zwernemann, manager, advanced uninhabited concepts, at Northrop Grumman's Military Aircraft Systems division. The technologies considered will be limited to those available in the near term, he says. A follow-on programme could demonstrate longer-term technologies.
The FWV programme has goals of reducing cost by 20%, compared with the latest US fighters, while improving agility by 10%, efficiency by 10% and reducing weight by 20%. The study will identify those technologies which should be flight-tested, those than can be ground tested and those than can be evaluated using simulated "virtual" testing, Zwernemann says. The aim is to produce a modular vehicle which will allow alternative technologies to be evaluated.
Two FATE demonstrators are planned, although it is not clear whether these will be competing designs. The impending mergers of Boeing/McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed Martin/Northrop Grumman will reduce the number of competitors for the $160 million programme to just two.
Source: Flight International
