Lockheed Martin has joined the Northrop Grumman-led team competing to develop the US Air Force/Navy unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV). Boeing and Northrop Grumman won contracts from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in April to develop demonstrators for the UCAV programme, renamed the unmanned combat air system (UCAS).
Lockheed Martin was sidelined from UCAV activity in 1998, when it withdrew from the DARPA/USAF competition. Despite reports that it was working on a classified UCAV, the company had pinned its hopes on the US Navy's multirole endurance unmanned air vehicle requirement, but they were dashed this year when MRE was rolled into the joint UCAV project.
Northrop Grumman says Lockheed Martin's low-observability experience will be combined with its own vehicle management system capability for the UCAS programme.
Source: Flight International
