The Navy made aviation history on Tuesday when the service conducted the first ever aircraft carrier-based catapult launch of an unmanned aerial vehicle.
The X-47B aircraft lifted off the deck of the USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) and flew for 65 minutes before arriving on land at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md. The launch marked a key milestone for a program the Navy hopes will evolve into a cornerstone of future operations.
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| The Navy’s X-47B lifts off the USS George H.W. Bush. Photo by U.S. Navy. |
“We saw a small, but significant pixel in the future picture of our Navy as we begin integration of unmanned systems into arguably the most complex warfighting environment that exists today: the flight deck of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier,” Vice Adm. David Buss, the commander of Navy Air Forces, said in a statement.
The Navy has two of the X-47Bs, built by Northrop Grumman [NOC], that were developed under the Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) demonstration program, a precursor to the aircraft the Navy is developing for future operations, known as Unmanned Carrier Launched Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS).
The next key step in the UCAS program is to land the X-47B on the aircraft carrier by capturing the arresting gear used by other planes to rapidly stop. The Navy for the first time last week successfully did so on land at the Patuxent River station. The Navy said it plans to do a carrier-based landing this summer.
UCAS Program Manager Capt. Jaime Engdahl said the X-47B will conduct multiples approaches to the Bush in the weeks ahead, while arresting gear test landing will continue on shore.
The Navy last year for the first time loaded an X-47B on a carrier to evaluate its maneuverability and integration into flight deck operations, and also carried out the first catapult launch with a shore-based system.
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| The X-47B approaches over the USS George H.W. Bush. Photo by U.S. Navy. |
During Tuesday’s test, control of the X-47B transitioned from a carrier-based operator to one at Patuxent River, and the aircraft also safely navigated controlled airspace.
“The flight today demonstrated that the X-47B is capable of operation from a carrier, hand-off from one mission control station to another, flight through the national airspace, and recovery at another location without degradation in safety or precision,” Matt Funk, the lead test engineer for Navy’s UCAS, said.
The Navy in the next few weeks is expected to release a request for contractors to submit preliminary design proposals for the follow-on UCLASS program. In 2011 the service issued four separate UCLASS research and development contracts to Boeing [BA], General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Northrop Grumman.
The Navy could release a final request for proposals as early as 2014. Plans to deploy UCLASS were delayed last year by two years to 2020 to give more time for the technology to evolve, officials said at the time.