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MAY 23, 2002, 11:00 EDT
EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- The Boeing X-45A Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle, or UCAV, technology-demonstration aircraft on May 22 made aerospace history by completing its first flight. This step marks the beginning of flight testing of the first unmanned system designed from inception for combat.
X-45A flew for 14 minutes at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California, reaching an airspeed of 195 knots and altitude of 7,500 feet. Flight characteristics and basic aspects of aircraft operations, particularly the command and control link between the aircraft and the mission-control station, were successfully demonstrated.
The Boeing Phantom Works advanced research and development unit and the company's Unmanned Systems organization are developing UCAV for the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, and the U.S. Air Force.
Later this year a second X-45A will begin flying, leading to the start of multiaircraft flight-test demonstrations next year. Those coordinated flight tests are the technical heart of the program and the key to unlocking the transformational potential of this revolutionary weapon system. Further testing will continue to explore the boundaries of intelligent unmanned combat operations, culminating in fiscal 2006 with UCAVs and manned aircraft operating together during an exercise.
The operational UCAV system concept will be refined in parallel with X-45A flight testing. The X-45B fieldable prototype, now under development, will be larger and more capable than its predecessors. It will lay the foundation for an initial operational system toward the end of this decade.
In addition to the DARPA/Air Force UCAV, Boeing is developing a concept for the DARPA/U.S. Navy UCAV-N program. The company envisions a significant amount of subsystem and software commonality between the two programs, an arrangement that could reduce cost and risk associated with both efforts.
Military & Aerospace Electronics
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