PAUL LEWIS / WASHINGTON DC
DARPA/US Army UCAR could provide a mobile strike capability, supplementing manned attack helicopters, by 2009
The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and US Army are close to signing a collaborative agreement to start work with industry on the demonstration of an Unmanned Combat Armed Rotorcraft (UCAR). It could provide the army's future objective force with a mobile strike capability, supplementing manned attack helicopters.
DARPA and the army have mapped out a four-phase demonstration programme, the Robotic Rotary Wingman, to serve as the basis for a full-scale development effort from 2009. A memorandum of agreement is in the final stages of negotiation for the two agencies to fund the programme, says Robert Kennedy, associate director for the US Army's Aviation & Missile Research Development Engineering Center (AMRDEC).
The initial stage starting this fiscal year will be a 12-month concept development phase, with four contracts to be awarded.
Neither the army nor DARPA are defining the UCAR vehicle configuration - which could be rotary-wing, canard rotor wing, tiltwing or tiltrotor - with the competitors left to propose their own concepts. The primary focus will be on air-to-ground operations using present and future weapons.
Two teams will be down selected for a second phase of preliminary design starting in FY04, to be followed in FY05-6 by a single company system development and demonstration. A fourth and final phase of system maturation and demonstration will follow, in readiness for a full-scale development.
UCAR could leverage a series of parallel AMRDEC-funded science and technology programmes, such as the Small Affordable Turbine Engine (SATE) and new drive systems for future unmanned air vehicles. SATE is intended to produce a new engine, capable of a 20% cut in specific fuel consumption, 50% improved power-to-weight ratio and 35% lower cost, by drawing on advances in the Integrated High Performance Turbine Engine Technology initiative.
The army is already experimenting with arming UAVs, integrating the autonomous Northrop Grumman Brilliant Anti-armour Technology submunition on its TRW/ Israel Aircraft Industries Hunters.
But a recent army firing of a Lockheed Martin AGM-114 Hellfire anti-tank missile from a Gyrodyne QH-50, a co-axial counter-rotating rotor testbed, resulted in the crash of the radio-controlled drone.
Source: Flight International
