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.
By
Gidget Fuentes - Staff writer
