Date: Saturday, December 20, 2008, 2:09 PM
PALMDALE,
Dubbed Air Vehicle 1, the X-47B aircraft is the first of what will be
two demonstration aircraft built by Northrop Grumman Corp. It was designed to
test the idea of an autonomous airplane that would launch and recover on
Nimitz-class aircraft carriers and conduct strike and other missions without
the hands-on controls of an onboard pilot.
PHOTO COURTESY NORTHROP GRUMMAN
The X-47B unmanned jet, the first to launch and recover aboard
Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, would strike targets and do aerial
reconnaissance, surveillance and time-sensitive targeting -- all without a
pilot aboard. Officials unveiled the single-jet, cockpit-less aircraft, one of
two known as Unmanned Combat Air Systems-Demonstration, or UCAS-D, during a
Tuesday ceremony at Northrop
Hundreds of workers joined military and company officials in a hangar
at Northrop Grumman’s Palmdale site for the official “unveiling” ceremony,
where guests got a close-up look at an aircraft the Unmanned Combat Air
System-Demonstration, or UCAS-D that only two months ago wasn’t yet
assembled.
The X-47B’s bat wing shape takes a page from the Air Force’s B-2
stealth bomber, which Northrop Grumman designed and built, then in secret, at
this desert location north of
“This will be the airplane we’ll be flying next year,” Scott
Winship, UCAS program manager and Northrop Grumman vice president, told
reporters before the ceremony.
Engineers will put the aircraft through a series of proof tests here
and at nearby Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., and will conduct its first flight
before the aircraft heads east to Patuxent River, Md., in November 2009 for a
year of additional testing and the official “roll out” ceremony. “We’ve
still got a long way to go,” said Gene Fraser, deputy vice president for
Northrop Grumman’s Integrated Systems-Western Region.
That includes the important shipboard trials, which will test the
aircraft in the harsher, less forgiving and busy environment of a carrier in
the open ocean. Program officials plan to conduct sea trials and the first
flight aboard an aircraft carrier in November 2011, an event set to mark the
100th anniversary of naval aviation. The aircraft carrier Truman will likely
get the nod as the first to host and operate the aircraft at sea, said Capt.
Martin Deppe, the Navy’s UCAS program manager.
Winship said the advent of the aircraft “signals a sea change in
military aviation.”
The carrier-based aircraft will provide commanders with an airplane
that can be launched farther at sea, and without a pilot, the aircraft can fly
distant missions and loiter over a target or combat zone much longer than what
a human pilot and aircrew can safely do.
“This airplane is flying alone,” Deppe noted.
Officials said the X-47B was designed for autonomous aerial refueling
by both naval tankers, which use the probe and drogue system, and Air Force
tankers, which refuel with a boom and receptacle.
Northrop Grumman, which last year won the Navy’s $635.8 million
contract to build the two X-47B aircraft, leads an industry team building the
single-engine aircraft, which is designed with landing gear and an arresting
hook for carrier catapults and launches and foldable wings for easier stowage.
The jet’s twin weapons bays will hold a pair of 2,000-pound Joint
Direct Attack Munitions, or guided bombs, for strike missions,
But it also will be outfitted with various systems and sensors that
would expand its capabilities to include time-sensitive targeting and
intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions.
Navy officials hope to ultimately outfit and deploy the first unmanned
combat squadron by 2025, when the unmanned airplanes would operate from carrier
flight decks alongside the Joint Strike Fighter jets.