There’s no funding in the fiscal year 2016 budget so far to extend the Navy’s X-47B unmanned aircraft demonstrator program, but Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) doesn’t want to see the two test planes put in a museum just yet.
In a May 1 letter, Forbes asked Navy Secretary Ray Mabus for additional information about what the Navy plans to do with the drone, which was the first to operate on an aircraft carrier and recently successfully completed aerial refueling tests.
“If I understand correctly, the airframes have only used approximately 15 percent of their lifetime flying hours,” wrote Forbes, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee’s seapower and projection forces subcommittee. “Given that we have invested some $1.5 billion developing these aircraft (and other supporting technology) and given that they are–and unfortunately may remain–unique items in the Navy’s aircraft inventory, it would seem unwise to dismantle or dispose of them prematurely.”
The Navy, along with industry partner Northrop Grumman [NCO], developed the X-47B for the Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstrator program, or UCAS-D, which was meant to test the feasibility of operating an unmanned aerial vehicle on an aircraft carrier. In demonstrations in 2013, the UAV was the first to complete a catapult launch and arrested landing on a carrier deck. It returned to the carrier in 2014 for cooperative flights with manned F/A-18 aircraft.
A successful aerial refueling demonstration this April was the latest milestone for the X-47B program. But with little money left from fiscal year 2015, and none requested in either the fiscal year 2016 president’s budget or the defense authorization bill recently approved by HASC, the Navy has not yet decided the fate of the two test aircraft (Defense Daily, April 23).
An operational system called the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike, or UCLASS, is in the works, with Northrop Grumman, Boeing [BA], Lockheed Martin [LMT] and General Atomics vying to build it. However, progress on the program has been put on hold while the Defense Department studies its requirements.
The Navy envisions UCLASS as a long-range intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance asset with a light strike capability, but Forbes and others in Congress have pushed the service to develop a highly-weaponized system capable of penetrating contested airspace.
No matter what the Navy decides, the service should leverage the X-47B for whatever it can, Forbes said.
“Even if the Navy’s vision and requirements for UCLASS remain unchanged, I suspect that some further use might yet be found for these two highly capable platforms as unmanned testbeds or as surrogates for other systems–perhaps even the similar-looking aircraft under development in China and Russia,” he wrote.
Forbes also applauded Mabus’ decision to appoint a new deputy assistant secretary for unmanned systems and to establish a new unmanned office within the Navy staff.