The Navy is about a month away from releasing its request for proposals (RFP) for the aircraft carrier-based unmanned aerial vehicle designed for surveillance and strike, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the chief of naval operations, said recently.
Greenert said the Navy has completed defining the requirements for the Unmanned Carrier Launched Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) program and is working through the final stages to get it approved before putting out the RFP.
“We’re about a month away on that,” he told a gathering hosted by Jim McAleese & Associates and Credit Suisse.
The Navy in 2011 issued four separate UCLASS research and development contracts to Boeing [BA], General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Northrop Grumman [NOC].
The Navy said last year that it was delaying plans to deploy a UCLASS system by two years to 2020 because of budget constraints and to give more time for the technology to evolve.
Meanwhile, the Navy has been forging ahead with its Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstrator (UCAS-D) program, also known as the X-47B, which is being developed under a separate program but also as a precursor to UCLASS.
In December, the Navy certified the X-47B built by Northrop Grumman for carrier deck operations during testing on the USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75).
Also that month, the second of the two aircraft for the first time was successfully launched from ground-based catapult at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., as part of testing before an aircraft carrier takeoff.
Greenert said plans to launch off a carrier are scheduled for this summer.