As the Navy scored a historic success in the first ever landing of an unmanned aerial vehicle on an aircraft carrier, greater focus is now shifting to the follow-on program that will provide the systems that one day will be operating off the ships.
The Navy’s arresting gear landing of the unmanned X-47B on the USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) came under a demonstration program to prove out the concept. Soon, the two X-47Bs built by Northrop Grumman [NOC] for the Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) demonstration program will be retired to museums and the competition to build the next set of aircraft is forging ahead.
Boeing [BA], Lockheed Martin [LMT], General Atomics and Northrop Grumman are all in the early process of designing their offerings for the Unmanned Carrier Launched Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) program under research and development contracts. The UCLASS systems are meant to be platforms for intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance (ISR) missions with a limited strike capability.
The Navy plans to issue a draft request for proposals for the next stage of UCLASS in August, a final request for proposals early next year and select a winner by September 2014, Rear Adm. Mat Winter, the program executive officer for unmanned aviation and strike weapons at Naval Air Systems Command, recently told reporters.
Winter said moments after the X-47Bs landing that the Navy envisions having enough of the systems to operate two orbits off of four aircraft to maintain a persistent capability around the clock, every day. He did not say how many of the aircraft will constitute an orbit but that he expects each orbit to cost about $150 million.
NAVAIR is already applying the lessons learned from the UCAS program and funneling the capabilities into the requirements for UCLASS and the systems aboard ships that will be supporting their missions, Winter said in a conference call with reporters. He said the concept of operations will also evolve as more is learned.
The UCAS program was geared toward assessing the ability of the X-47Bs to operate in a carrier environment, but as the Navy transitions to UCLASS, more will have to be worked out. A key challenge, Winter said, will be the integration of the payloads, such as sensors and sensors packages, carrier communications and strike capability onto the platform. That was not part of the demonstration program.
“The integration of those, the command and control of those, the communication networks with those all need to be matured, verified, integrated and fielded,” he said.