Graham Warwick/WASHINGTON DC
The US Navy plans to join the unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) programme being run by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the USAir Force.
DARPA is to repeat part of the Phase I concept definition effort, which led to Boeing being selected for the UCAV technology demonstration, "to look at the unique aspects of the naval environment", says programme manager Col Michael Leahy.
The USN would not join the programme until the proposed third phase, he says. Currently unfunded, the Phase III risk reduction and operational evaluation effort is planned as a bridge between the Phase II technology demonstration and engineering and manufacturing development.
Boeing is producing two UCAV demonstrators for Phase II. The first is to fly early next year and the second early in 2002. Boeing will this year fly a modified Lockheed T-33 that will be "a UCAV in everything but the skin", says Leahy. "This will take risk out."
For safety, the piloted T-33 will be used as a surrogate UCAV in demonstrations involving the simultaneous operation of manned and unmanned aircraft, Leahy says.
The capability of the two UCAVs and the associated mission control station will be upgraded in a series of blocks until they are ready for the technology demonstration's "graduation exercise" - a suppression of enemy air defences (SEAD) mission in which the UCAVs will detect, locate, identify and attack a target autonomously.
The demonstration is timed to support an analysis of alternatives (AoA) which will determine whether UCAVs have a place in the future USAF force structure, augmenting manned aircraft on SEAD and strike missions. "The programme has been structured to win the AoA and be ready for low-risk EMD in 2004-5," says Leahy.
If the USN joins the programme it will be in Phase III, he says. This involves construction of a third, production-representative UCAV for user tests to determine the system's operational utility. The composite-airframe third vehicle would include stealth and other features absent from the first two metal-airframe UCAVs.
Source: Flight International
