X-47B Will Pair with Manned Aircraft in Testing Later This Year
By: Dave Majumdar Published: January 31, 2014
X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) demonstrators, conducts
touch and go landing on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier
USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77). US Navy Photo
The plan is for fleet operators to understand exactly how an unmanned aircraft would work around the carrier flight deck and develops standard operating procedures, Winter said.
The idea is to reduce the risk for the operational follow-on to the X-47B called the Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) aircraft, which is slated to arrive on the flight deck around 2020. “And when we do start doing flight tests with the UCLASS, it is not the first time that they have done that and we’re already ahead of the game,” Winter said.
Meanwhile, the X-47B will continue to fly at Patuxent River to refine the aircraft’s precision navigation technology, landing algorithms, ground handling and the bandwidth of its data-links, Winter said.
The Navy will keep the X-47B flying over the next two to three years to mature and verify technologies for the UCLASS program. Among the most important of those technologies are the line-of-sight and beyond line-of-sight data-links for the UCLASS program. “We need to make sure we perfect beyond line-of sight control,” Winter said.
Beyond that, there might eventually be further technology maturation endeavors the X-47B program might be tasked with—the data from which will be transferred to the UCLASS program. “We will identify other elements that we want to use this for, and we will have the flexibility to do that,” Winter said.
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02-02-2014, 18:37
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