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USA prepares trial of 'swarming' UCAVs
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| 09 September 2002 |
By Nick Cook, JDW Aerospace Consultant, London
Boeing is preparing a series of tests that aim to prove that the X-45 Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV), which is sponsored by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the US Air Force (USAF), can be flown sucessfully in multi-ship formations.
The tests will be closely monitored by senior air force officials, some of whom have expressed doubts that UCAVs can be 'swarmed' successfully in flight without incurring huge costs. Gen John Jumper, the service's Chief of Staff, said recently that swarming UCAVs, although highly desirable, would be "a bandwidth and software nightmare."
Boeing is taking an incremental development approach with the UCAV that aims to overcome such concerns via so-called 'spirals' of development. These, according to Mike Heinz, Boeing's vice president for unmanned systems, are already well defined on the X-45.
The two vehicles built under the X-45A programme are already "pretty far along", Heinz said, with one aircraft in the air and the other due to fly before the end of the year. The next step will be to fly the aircraft together. This will be done in a series of tests that will go from the current hands-on intensive (man-in-the-loop) operation to adaptive autonomous operation and finally co-ordinated adaptive autonomous operation. The latter describes the X-45's ability to fly in formation like a manned fighter in the way outlined by Gen Jumper.
"We're contracted under Spiral 0 to take mission management software and prove that the vehicles can be automomous, which means that the operator doesn't have to intervene from take-off to landing if he doesn't want to," Heinz explained. For that kind of capability, he added, robust anti-jam communications are required, "so that when the operator does want to intervene, he can." The lone X-45A that has been flying since last May is already performing autonomous take-off and landing operations.
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