PATUXENT RIVER, Md.–The Navy’s senior executive officer for unmanned aviation said this week that the planned timeframe for basing a UAV strike platform on an aircraft carrier was “pretty ambitious,” but the service still plans to do so by 2020.
Rear Adm. Mat Winter, program executive officer for unmanned aviation and weapons, noted that operating the platform involved the complexities associated with its technology, along with fully integrating it on an aircraft carrier and training the operating personnel.
“The timeline for 2020 is ambitious in that we have to make sure we have a full system capability,” Winter said.
Winter spoke to reporters at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., on Tuesday to highlight the X-47B, which was developed by Northrop Grumman [NOC] under the Navy’s Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstration (UCAS-D) program, which is the precursor to the follow-on program known as Unmanned Carrier Launched Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS).
The Navy has two X-47Bs. One took its first flight at NAS Patuxent River on Sunday. The X-47Bs, which resembled the manned B-2 bomber built by the same company, were developed and test flown at Edwards AFB, Calif., before recently arriving at NAS Patuxent River.
The UCAS-D program is designed to produce an unmanned, carrier-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft with the ability to carry out precision strike operations, and to mature the technology ahead of the UCLASS program. The first test of an X-47B on an aircraft carrier is slated to take place next year, Winter said.
Navy officials had hoped to have either a UCLASS system deployed with the fleet’s carrier groups by 2018 under initial operational capability, but that has been delayed until at least 2020 because of budgetary pressure, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said Feb. 16.
Winter said Naval Air Systems Command is approaching the source selection phase of the UCLASS program with the planned release of a request for proposals, but he would not be more specific on the timeframe.
The Navy a year ago issued four separate UCLASS research and development contracts to Boeing [BA], General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Northrop Grumman.