UCAV/UAV/UAS News and discussion 2015

[Tango III]

Turkish Aerospace Industries has begun flight testing of the Block B variant of its Anka medium-altitude, long-endurance unmanned air vehicle.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/art...flight-408567/

[djcross]

Navy's UCLASS competition delayed until next year

[bring_it_on]

Uclass could have been stunted due to advances by the Air Force and CIA in developing its stealthy RQ-180 unmanned reconnaissance system, which is thought to be entering operations this year. Details have not been released by the Pentagon, but the Air Force acknowledged its existence in December 2013 in response to an Aviation Week query. The RQ-180 is being developed as a stealthy, penetrating intelligence collector that would assume the role once held by the SR-71 in being able to surveil well-defended targets around the globe.

Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Virginia), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said during a Feb. 3 Defense Writers Group breakfast in Washington that the discussion about Uclass was mired in classified restrictions. "I wish I could be more specific with you on the Uclass," he said. "I am pretty comfortable at this particular point in time, although most of the conversations are on a classified level. But I’m pretty comfortable with the direction … I’m not trying to be vague. I just don’t want to go to jail."

http://aviationweek.com/awin-only/no...vy-punts-again

[djcross]

Some strange words from Admiral Greenert. He states that he doesn't believe in stealthy jets but he has a fleet of stealthy vehicles called submarines. Oh, the irony!

His best move would be to abdicate the role of aerial power projection to USAF, scrap his CSGs and build more subs. If he doesn't, some smart Congressman is going to ask why the US taxpayer should pay for a surface Navy which sits out the first week of the war while USAF and the Army air defense units make things safe for the Navy.

[Tango III]

The Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe has lost contact with a Schiebel S-100 Camcopter unmanned air vehicle that was carrying out surveillance missions over Ukraine.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/art...kraine-408786/

[Tango III]

The US State Department has cleared the sale of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc (GA-ASI) MQ-9 Reaper medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to the Netherlands, it was announced on 6 February.

http://www.janes.com/article/48793/u...he-netherlands

[Rii]

Surprised there is nothing here yet about China's new HALE UAV project, rumoured to have made first flight recently.

[bring_it_on]

Got an actual picture? Seems like someone just took the Sensor Craft proposals and put them all into one graphic as one vehicle

[Tango III]

Following requested purchases of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Predator/Reaper-series unmanned air vehicles by France and the Netherlands in recent weeks, the USA’s backing of an export licence for India but a rejection for Jordan have raised questions over how much potential the UAVs really have outside of NATO.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/art...ential-408854/

[Rii]

Got an actual picture? Seems like someone just took the Sensor Craft proposals and put them all into one graphic as one vehicle

Just as many photographs as there are of LRS-B.

Try this link; I'm not sure if it's still up because it keeps redirecting me to the Australian website: http://www.popsci.com/china-flies-it...e-divine-eagle

One thing seems clear: it's big. Both physically, and metaphorically.

[bring_it_on]

Just as many photographs as there are of LRS-B.

The LRS-B is an actual program of record with budgets that are largely open for all to view. The RQ-180's existence has been acknowledged by the Pentagon (to AviationWeek).

This is a graphic and there are a ton of graphics on the internet on supposed chinese projects. Hence, I asked for any concrete picture of this actually being real. Since the LRS-B hasnt flown yet, it would be quite dumb to ask for a proof of its flight. This however according to rumors has recently flown.

Can't blame for a lack of media coverage since its just a graphic at this point. I am sure if it is real, some picture would eventually "leak out". Perhaps then there would be more chatter about it.

[bring_it_on]

WEST: Bob Work Says UCLASS Development Needs a ‘Joint Perspective’

SAN DIEGO, CALIF. – The first operational unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to be used on the Navy’s aircraft carriers needs to be developed with a “joint perspective,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work said during a Keynote speech at WEST 2015 on Tuesday.

He said that perspective necessitated the pause in the release of the request (RFP) for proposal for the air segment of the Navy’s Unmanned Carrier Launched Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) – or RAQ-25 as USNI News understands it’s known inside the service.

“We decided this year we were almost ready to launch the RFP but we decided to take a pause because we want to consider the UCLASS as part of the joint family of unmanned surveillance and strike systems and make sure that we’re going after the right capabilities,” Work said.
“In addition to looking at capabilities that we already have and using them differently, we’re going to make sure in this environment, that when we go after a new platform, it’s the platform that we need from a joint perspective.”

The pause is the direct result of an ongoing comprehensive information, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) UAV review of the Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD), the Navy said last week.

Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) has pitched UCLASS as an UAV that would operate during the downtime of a carrier air wing as a lightly armed and high endurance aircraft focused primarily on ISR for the carrier strike group (CSG).

A previous concept called for a low observable and heavily armed aircraft capable of penetrating enemy air defense networks with a payload equivalent to a F-35C Lighting II Joint Strike Fighter.

As to what capabilities a joint perspective would bring to UCLASS capabilities are unclear. Critics outside the service of the last discussed UCLASS concept have said the ISR capabilities of the Navy’s version of UCLASS would be redundant to capabilities of other ISR platforms coming online like the Boeing P-8A Poseidon and the Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton high altitude UAV.

Meanwhile, the service said it plans to issue the air segment RFP sometime next year. It’s too early to say if the RFP will be an open competition or issued directly to companies that have done previous UCLASS development work – General Atomics, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin.

As a result of the pause, the service said it would push the initial operating date for UCLASS from 2020 to 2022 or 2023.

[bring_it_on]

Export restrictions limit Predator potential

There may be additional demand in the US intelligence community’s classified budgets, however. Last April, a senior company official told Flightglobal that it is delivering one Avenger – a jet-powered, armed UAV with radar stealth characteristics – every nine months to a classified customer, and that there could be additional Reapers in the pipeline as well.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/art...ential-408854/

[bring_it_on]

General Atomics Claims Laser Weapon Advance

General Atomics (GA) has completed laboratory tests of what it calls its “third-generation laser system,” saying that the weapon sets new standards in efficiency, beam quality and system weight. According to an industry source, the company says the new laser will deliver 150 kw of energy, with three times higher beam quality than the Laser Weapon System (LaWS) now being tested by the U.S. Navy on the amphibious warfare ship Ponce, and will be able to fire 10 shots between 3-min.-long -recharges.

Moreover, the laser is being designed as part of a 3,000-lb. self-contained package that can be installed in the weapon/payload bay of the company’s Avenger turbofan-powered unmanned air vehicle. The same industry source suggests that GA’s technology is mature enough to fly on an Avenger within 18 months, given adequate funding.

According to analyst Mark Gunzinger of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), a 150-kw laser “with decent beam quality” would be a step above previous electrically powered laser weapons, which have demonstrated the ability to engage targets such as mortar rounds and small unmanned air vehicles. The new weapon could be “effective against air-to-air missiles, and against cruise missiles using a crossing shot,” he surmises.

The new system—not yet formally named—has evolved from government-funded programs and is being developed with a mix of government and company money, according to Mike Perry, GA’s vice-president for laser and electro-optic systems. These programs include the High-Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System (Hellads), still underway with the support of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the Army-sponsored Robust Electric Laser Initiative (Reli). GA’s Reli work was completed in 2013.

The latest Hellads demonstrator, a 150-kw weapon, is ready for delivery to Darpa, Perry says. It is due to be tested at White Sands (New Mexico) Missile Range, and by the end of the current fiscal year—the last in which work is funded—it should be moved to a mountaintop site to emulate airborne missions, including targeting of ground vehicles and aircraft self-defense.

The “third-generation” laser is more refined than Hellads, Perry says, although it uses technologies that have been integrated into the latest Hellads demonstrator. While not confirming specific figures, Perry says the beam quality—a measure of how tightly the beam is focused—is “the highest ever achieved on an electrically pumped laser” and that its power output is comparable to the 150-kW Hellads. However, the Hellads name is not being used for the new system, which employs a different lasing medium. Perry declines to say whether or not it is a liquid medium.

He says the system’s space, weight and power requirements are sized to the Avenger. GA has noted that the UAV has a 3,500-lb. payload and 20 kw of power available. This was not the initial target of the program, Perry says, but the UAV and laser programs were evolving in parallel. “The Avenger was a challenge, but if we could size it for the Avenger all other platforms would be easier.”

The engineering that remains to be done before the system can fly is “not in the laser,” Perry says, but in the platform integration and design of a beam director and a target acquisition system. GA, he believes, is “substantially ahead” of competitors using fiber lasers, partly because of experience gained in the Hellads program. Another industry source points out that an airborne laser is “a system of systems” including power conditioning and storage, cooling and optics as well as laser modules, and that these may be areas where GA has moved ahead of its rivals, in part because of in-house expertise with high-energy storage systems.

The timescale for future developments will depend on budgets, Perry says. The next step would be to ground-test a complete system, followed by integration into an aircraft. “We see the Avenger as the next step, but others see other platforms coming first. It will be determined by the customer.” The special-operations community, for example, has proposed several different approaches to develop for a pallet-mounted laser that could be installed on a C-130.

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency, meanwhile, is pushing UAV-borne lasers for target discrimination as an interim step toward the much higher-power levels needed for interception. The MDA is requesting $285.8 million in fiscal 2016-20 for “weapons technology,” according to budget documents, and the aim is to “build the foundation for the next-generation UAV-borne laser system, capable of tracking and eventually destroying the enemy at a much lower cost than the existing missile defense system.” Of that, about $45 million is expected in fiscal 2016.

MDA Director Vice Adm. James Syring was tight-lipped about the work during a Feb. 2 briefing. “At the power levels we’re talking about today, forward discrimination and tracking in the near term” are possible missions, he said. “Due to the classification level, I’d just like to leave it at that for today.”

A December 2014 report by the Congressional Research Service summarizes estimates of the effectiveness of different laser power levels against different target classes, as published by a number of sources over the past 10 years. Most agree that guided missiles start to become vulnerable as power exceeds 100 kw if the beam quality remains high. One important issue is that the power of the laser is only one element of its “target fluence,” which according to Gunzinger’s 2012 report for the CSBA is defined as the amount of energy that a laser device can concentrate on a desired spot on a target over a specific distance. Fluence is affected by beam quality, jitter and atmospheric absorption and scattering.

The effectiveness of a laser weapon will also depend on the hardness of the target and the kill mechanism. For instance, a missile aimed at an aircraft could be defeated at close range and short time-to-impact if its radome (already under thermal and aerodynamic stress) is destroyed, as postulated in a number of research papers. That damage would both destroy the missile’s seeker and destabilize it aerodynamically, and a relatively small miss distance is needed to prevent damage to the aircraft. Defending a ship against an anti-ship cruise missile may mean more power and range to ensure that missile fragments and fuel do not hit the ship. Says the CSBA’s Gunzinger: The earlier Hellads is believed to use liquid-cooled slab laser modules.

http://aviationweek.com/defense/gene...weapon-advance

[hopsalot]

General Atomics Claims Laser Weapon Advance






http://aviationweek.com/defense/gene...weapon-advance

If this is true then we are likely at the beginning of a new era for combat aircraft.

You might as well cut and paste the article into the 6th generation fighter and next generation bomber threads as well.

[latenlazy]

The LRS-B is an actual program of record with budgets that are largely open for all to view. The RQ-180's existence has been acknowledged by the Pentagon (to AviationWeek).

This is a graphic and there are a ton of graphics on the internet on supposed chinese projects. Hence, I asked for any concrete picture of this actually being real. Since the LRS-B hasnt flown yet, it would be quite dumb to ask for a proof of its flight. This however according to rumors has recently flown.

Can't blame for a lack of media coverage since its just a graphic at this point. I am sure if it is real, some picture would eventually "leak out". Perhaps then there would be more chatter about it.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Unfortunately for us not everything in China leaks out immediately.

[MadRat]

I'd want this on manned systems first. Whether it is meant to be defensive or offensive, I'd want the man in the loop latency as close to zero as I could possibly get. Currently you're looking optimistically at a four second latency from the order to fire to the actual execution.

[bring_it_on]

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Unfortunately for us not everything in China leaks out immediately.

Who is saying that it is? I am not saying that there is no chance this thing can exist. I was merely asking for a picture if it were present or leaked. Lets see if this thing ever shows up in a leak. Otherwise there are websites that are dedicated to rumours and there are plenty of graphics floating around for a host of projects from bombers to other aircraft.

[latenlazy]

Who is saying that it is? I am not saying that there is no chance this thing can exist. I was merely asking for a picture if it were present or leaked. Lets see if this thing ever shows up in a leak. Otherwise there are websites that are dedicated to rumours and there are plenty of graphics floating around for a host of projects from bombers to other aircraft.

I'm just saying that we may not get pictures for a very long time, even if the thing flew. We just don't have much transparency with what China's doing with UAVs. They're easier to hide. That said the kinds of leaks we got on this one is more similar to the type of leaks that get confirmed. The pictures and other materials are of the kind we often see in Chinese research papers.

[mrmalaya]

Got an actual picture? Seems like someone just took the Sensor Craft proposals and put them all into one graphic as one vehicle

I agree. As such until it is verified, it seems fishy.