Graham Warwick/Washington DC
Northrop Grumman will take delivery of its Pegasus naval unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV-N) technology demonstrator from Scaled Composites in May and begin ground tests leading to a first flight late this year.
Project Pegasus is a company-funded effort to demonstrate key technologies for the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) UCAV-N programme. Objectives include demonstrating suitability for aircraft carrier operations.
Boeing and Northrop Grumman completed the $2.3 million Phase 1A of the DARPA/US Navy UCAV-N programme in March, developing clean-sheet designs for unmanned systems capable of performing surveillance, strike and defence-suppression missions. Risk-reduction work is continuing under the $25 million Phase 1B.
As Boeing has already rolled out a UCAV demonstrator under a similar DARPA/US Air Force programme, Northrop Grumman launched the Pegasus effort "to show we could develop a technology demonstrator quickly", says naval UCAV programme manager Randal Secor. Project launch to first flight will be 18 months.
The 1,740kg (3,840lb) flying-wing Pegasus, powered by a 3,200lb-thrust (7.2kN) Pratt &Whitney Canada JT15D turbofan, will test low-speed handling qualities. The vehicle will be equipped with the navy's next-generation carrier landing system - the shipboard relative global positioning system - and conduct simulated arrested landings at a land base.
The Pegasus will also demonstrate an avionics and vehicle management system, developed by BAE Systems, applicable to future UCAVs, says Secor.
Northrop Grumman plans to complete Pegasus flight testing by year-end, when DARPA is scheduled to exercise options for Phase 2 of the UCAV-N programme. This will fund one or both contractors to build and test a UCAV demonstration system, including two air vehicles, by mid-2005.
Secor cautions that Northrop Grumman's UCAV-N demonstrator may not look like the diamond-planform Pegasus, which is based on earlier work believed to involve a manned tailless fighter design. The demonstrator will be larger, with the ability to carry a 1,800kg weapons load internally.
Plans call for the UCAV-N to enter engineering and manufacturing development in 2008-10, says Secor. This will be three to five years behind the USAF UCAV programme, which is planned to enter the development phase in 2005, leading to service entry by 2010 at the earliest.
Source: Flight International
