X-47B in Flight at NAS Patuxent River
Northrop Grumman
PopSci’s favorite autonomous warplane
is having a big week at Naval Air Station Patuxent River. The first of
the two aircraft has been reassembled, run through a battery of tests,
and is officially back in the air, this time on the East Coast.
On Sunday the X-47B made a 36-minute flight, looping over the
Chesapeake Bay at altitudes up to 7,500 feet--appropriately with the
Navy’s carrier-capable workhorse, an F/A-18 jet, giving chase. The X-47B
is the Navy’s (and the world’s) first attempt at creating an unmanned
jet aircraft that can take off and land on a carrier deck--if
successful, it will also be the first tailless aircraft to do so. Pax
River held a media event yesterday to celebrate the first flight, which
brings us one big step closer to the advent of the first unmanned,
autonomous, aircraft carrier-capable strike aircraft.
Unlike
the initial flight tests at Edwards Air Force Base in California, this
first flight at NAS Pax River demonstrates that the X-47B has been
successfully folded into the Navy's command and control framework, which
has been designed to mimic that of an aircraft carrier. Pax River is
home to one of the world’s only terrestrial carrier simulators--a runway
fitted with arresting cables for carrier-style landings and a steam
catapult for high-speed launches. From a facility at Pax that simulates
the air traffic control center and primary flight control tower on real
carriers, the Unmanned Combat Air System team will spend the rest of
this year getting the X-47B ready for real carrier tests, slated for
sometime in the first half of 2013, pending the availability of a
carrier on the East Coast.
While the X-47B itself is not intended for active duty, the UCAS
program that created it will provide operational guidance and
demonstrate technologies for a follow-on program (currently termed
UCLASS) that aims to put operational unmanned strike jets on carrier
decks by the end of the decade.
No comments:
Post a Comment