An influx of new funds and growing confidence in the technology
are providing much needed momentum to the Air Force Unmanned Combat
Air Vehicle. Program officials said that, at the current pace, the
aircraft could be ready to join the fleet before the end of the
decade.
The UCAV, built by the Boeing Corp. in Seal Beach, Calif., passed
medium-speed taxi tests earlier this year at Edwards Air Force base.
High-speed taxi tests were scheduled to begin last month and flight
tests could take place as early as the end of May.
With the high-speed taxi, “We are going to be able to prove
that we have command and control of the vehicle [moving at] up to
140 knots on the ground,” Col. Michael Leahy, the UCAV program
director at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, told
National Defense. “The data that we get on those tests say
that we have sufficient confidence, regarding the navigation and
control algorithm to proceed to the first flight.”
Once the first flight is completed, a series of system checkup
flights is planned. “That is going to take us into the late
summer time, when we progressively expand the envelope,” he
explained. Unlike current drones, such as the Predator, the UCAV
operates autonomously. It has to take off, land and taxi without
any human operator directing it.
The UCAV is “not one of those toy vehicles,” said a
Boeing official close to the program, who did not want to be quoted
by name. The aircraft is meant to go into combat during the “toughest
first three days of the war,” to try destroying enemy air
defenses and feeding targeting information to other manned aircraft
in the area.
The aircraft that is now being tested, has gone through several
design changes since the first UCAV concept was designed in the
late-1990s. The Air Force and DARPA are in charge of the program.
The first prototype, the X-45A, is representative of the requirements
set in 1998, which have since changed.
George Muellner, president of Boeing’s Phantom Works, explained
that, after assessing the X-45A vehicle, the Air Force decided that
it wanted a slightly larger payload and different maneuver tactics.
The result is the current X-45B model. “It [the vehicle] increased
slightly, but I don’t think it is going to be dramatic,”
he said. The basic systems are going to be the same, he emphasized.
The overall length of the vehicle increased by 14 percent, and
the wing area grew by 63 percent. The larger wing area offers a
wider angle-of-attack range and increases the gust margins, noted
Leahy. The UCAV has a 19,000/10,000 pound gross/empty weight respectively,
a 500-1,000 nautical miles mission radius and up to a 3,000-pound
weapons payload.
The X-45B is a “fieldable” prototype, said Leahy. That
could happen in the 2006-2007 time frame. The program has been funded
to produce 14 X-45B vehicles by 2008.
Until late last year, the program was not funded past 2003, and
it had no money to complete the X-45B development, according to
Leahy. “We did receive additional funding that allowed us
to fully fund the demonstration program and the development building,
the in-flight testing of the X-45 B, and additional funding to develop
and procure the 14 Block-10 vehicles,” Leahy explained.
In fiscal year 2003, the program received $91 million. The cash
infusion “accelerated the program,” said Leahy. “We
are going as fast as is technically possible to put the system in
the field. ... We can’t go any faster than we are currently
attempting.”
The UCAV is envisioned as a “spiral development” program,
Muellner noted. That means the first vehicle will be fielded with
its basic capabilities, but subsequent UCAVs will feature various
high-tech upgrades.
The Block 10 UCAV, scheduled for 2008, is going to be designed
for preemptive attack of enemy air-defense systems and will have
strike capabilities, said Muellner. Block 20 will then give the
vehicle a reactive capability, “when it will be able to operate
in an area, self-identify the threat systems and attack them,”
Muellner said. “A human in the loop, in this case, gives it
the consent to deliver the weapons.”
Approximately 16 Block 20 vehicles could be fielded in the 2010-2011
time frame, said Leahy. The Block 30 will add directed-energy weapons.
Initially, the UCAV will be able to carry six small-diameter bombs,
a 500-pound or a 1,000-pound JDAM (joint direct attack munitions)
on each side of the aircraft.
Multiple Operators
The basic design of the system is such that it can have multiple
operators overseeing a group of vehicles. The control station is
“slightly bigger than a PC,” said Muellner. It can be
installed on large airplanes, such as AWACS or Joint STARS.
The UCAVs potentially could fight in packs of three or four, said
Leahy. They should be able to get to a certain point, engage the
target and coordinate with the other vehicles in the pack to decide
which has the best sensor, which one can take images or which one
can fire its weapons.
In this regard, the UCAV represents a drastic departure from the
current technology seen in unmanned drones such as the Predator
or the Global Hawk, according to Leahy.
“The Global Hawk pretty much has an operator that is watching
over its flight and is flying a mission plan that was set for it,”
Leahy explained. “The UCAVs have on board the ability to dynamically
re-plan their route and do cooperative targeting with each other.”
The difference between a Predator equipped with Hellfire missiles
and the UCAV is like that between “high-school and professional
basketball players.” While the Predator is flown by remote
control, the UCAV has on-board intelligence. “I don’t
mean to take anything away from the Predator, but it is not designed
to do the missions that we want to do.”
In parallel, Boeing, DARPA and the Air Force are working on a training
plan. The operators will train with exactly the same system they
would be using in actual combat, either from a ground station or
an air station. “Given the simulations we put in this thing,
the operator would not really know whether the vehicle was actually
airborne or not,” said Muellner. “The simulation coming
back to the operator would be the same sort of imagery from the
radar and other sensor information that he would get from a vehicle.
Training in real world operations would be almost identical.”
Leahy described the training approach as a “complete day
in the life of a UCAV.” The training community is looking
at every aspect of the operations—from when the UCAV is taken
“out of a box” to the time it actually flies a mission
and comes back, he said.
It is still not clear how much these vehicles will cost. Originally,
the plan was to limit the price to one-third of the cost of a Joint
Strike Fighter. That would have priced the UCAV at about $10 million
a piece. But Leahy declined to commit to any numbers yet. “The
biggest thing we have to do is to redo our cost estimates,”
as the program goes through development, said Leahy. “We still
believe that we can be very affordable, but the affordability levels
are more of a question of where in the spirals we are taking that
snap shot.”