Kaman Aerospace and Lockheed Martin Systems Integration have unveiled plans to build an advanced optionally piloted multi role vertical take off and landing UAV demonstrator based on the Kaman K-MAX cargo helicopter.
Lockheed Martin to take the lead role on development of the flight control architecture, sensor suite and carry out integration.
Development costs will be shared between the two firms. Lockheed will also take the lead in marketing the proposed system internationally.
The proposed UAV will be weapons capable but not to the level proposed by the US Army’s former Unmanned Combat Air Rotorcraft (UCAR) programme.
The new optionally piloted version of K-MAX will be combat capable
A joint statement released by the two firms 8 March says that the new UAV will be capable of “truly autonomous military operations”. It also says that it is expected to be “survivable and effective on the future battlefield”.
The UAV mission control architecture will be based on Lockheed’s “KineForce” mission management system and “KineCommand” command and control system product lines the statement says.
The development programme will also re-use “technologies to enable ease of operation, developed under previous [US] Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) unmanned air systems contracts. The Unmanned K-MAX will interface with existing ground control systems and operate with a small tablet controller for remote operations.”
According to Michele Evans, vice president of Aircraft Systems at Lockheed Martin Systems Integration, Owego, “the proven K-MAX helicopter is about to enter a new realm of safety and performance as an optionally piloted UAS that can be configured to conduct an unlimited number of duties with its outstanding and useful payload of 2,715kg (6,000lb)”.
He says “Lockheed Martin Systems Integration is excited to work with Kaman Aerospace, Helicopters Division to provide our customers with proven and reliable vertical-lift solutions."
Sal Bordonaro, president of the Helicopters Division of Kaman Aerospace Corporation, says that under the joint development effort 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."
Kaman first flew optionally piloted version of the K-Max in 2000 under the US Marine Corps sponsored Broad Area Unmanned Responsive Resupply Operations (BURRO) demonstration programme. The US Army conducted its own experiments with the existing optionally piloted demonstrator aircraft late last year as part of its advanced expeditionary force (AAEF) exercises at Fort Benning, Georgia.
That existing aircraft has “demonstrated more than twelve hours of continuous flight operations as an unmanned air system” Bordonaro says.
Lockheed Martin competed the UCAR programme in cooperation with Bell Helicopter, proposing a compound aircraft derived from Bell's Model 407 commercial helicopter.
Kaman competed UCAR in cooperation with Northrop Grumman and Sikorsky, proposing an intermeshing-rotor design derived from the K-Max. That aircraft would have had a shaped, all composite fuselage, new rotor aerofoil, blade servo-flap and forward-tilted mast to increase thrust and reduce drag. Its top speed was projected at above 160kt.
Source: FlightGlobal.com
