IF YOU SEE IT FLYING IN THE AIR DO NOT MISTAKE IT FOR A UFO
The Navy’s ultimate stealth fighter drone has achieved a new milestone — it flew in cruise configuration for the first time, stowing its landing gear for a streamlined flight.
The jet-powered, autonomous X-47B is designed for aerodynamic flight — it doesn’t even have a tail — partly to improve its stealth capabilities. But until now, its flight tests hadn’t retracted the landing gear, making it difficult to test its aerodynamic attributes. Further tests will help engineers prove the aircraft’s performance under a wide range of altitude, speed and fuel conditions.
Northrop Grumman is developing the X-4B on behalf of the U.S. Navy, which plans to use them on aircraft carriers. The drone is designed as a robotic strike aircraft, capable of taking on a multitude of missions at much higher speeds than its prop-powered kin, the Predator and Reaper.
It will be the first unmanned aircraft to take off and land on an aircraft carrier deck. As such, the Navy is also studying drone intelligence, so each X-47B will not need to pester the tower when the pattern is full.
The Navy's X-47B Will Be So Autonomous, You Can Steer It With Mouse Clicks
To fly the military’s baddest, most technologically advanced planes, you once had to have what Tom Wolfe called “that righteous stuff,” the willingness to strap yourself to a jet-fuel laden machine and push it to the very limits of its mechanical capabilities. Nowadays, unmanned systems have taken the human danger out of some combat missions, though human pilots remain at the sticks.
But not for long. The Navy’s experimental X-47B combat system won’t be remotely piloted, but almost completely autonomous. Human involvement won’t be of the stick-and-rudder variety, but handled with simple mouse clicks.
For flyboys proudly boasting their nighttime carrier landing cred, the idea is anathema. But given the difficulty and danger of carrier takeoffs and landings, automating them is one way to ensure safety--provided the systems work the way they are supposed to. The X-47B has already taken to the skies from Edwards AFB earlier this year, but this is a Navy plane. As such, it will begin “learning” the ins and outs of carrier operations via simulated takeoffs and landings starting in 2013.
If all goes well, the X-47B could be autonomously showing Navy pilots how to put a multimillion aircraft down on a sea-tossed carrier deck by 2014. Those carrier landings, of course, take a certain kind of touch. Specifically, that of an index finger on a standard issue mouse.
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