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Subject:
Boeing Unveils Phantom Ray UCAV...
DarthAmerica
6/2/2009 3:55:42 AM
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| Boeing is embarking upon a new rapid prototyping initiative for its defense business beginning with flight trials of its Phantom Ray?a version of the defunct X-45 effort.
The company is using its own internal research and development funding for flight tests of the unmanned air system demonstrator, slated for late 2010 at White Sands Missile Range, N. M., says Darryl Davis, vice president of the company?s Phantom Works division.
?Boeing is in the unmanned combat air system business . . . and in a big way,? Davis says.
Since losing the Joint Strike Fighter competition to Lockheed Martin in 2001 and the Navy-led Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) program to Northrop Grumman?s X-47 in 2007, the company has struggled to craft a strategic path forward for its tactical aircraft business. St. Louis is the hub of its fighter work, with the production line manufacturing F-15E variants for South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Singapore as well as F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and E/A-18 Growlers for the U.S. Navy here. Beyond these, however, the future is murky.
The Phantom Ray project?dubbed ?Project Reblue? internally at Boeing?was conceptualized in mid-2007, and started in earnest in June 2008, Davis says. It was kept secret even within the company except for a handful of executives and engineers until this month.
The concept behind Phantom Ray is to internally fund flight demonstrations of the air vehicle, giving the company hands-on experience with work on the potentially lucrative combat drone market while also wringing out some technologies that could be applied to future bids for Pentagon work. The key to the flight-test plan is to be able to ?demonstrate technology readiness? for the Pentagon when it articulates its needs.
This type of company-funded research is likely to become more critical to the survival of Boeing and its rivals in light of the expected leveling-off in U.S. defense spending. Defense Secretary Robert Gates proposed tabling a next-generation bomber?the biggest Air Force-led tactical aircraft program foreseen in the near future?among other major shifts in defense allocations.
For Boeing, Phantom Ray and other prototyping projects are keeping a small cadre of engineers focused on designing next-generation concepts and engaged in flight-test efforts. They are also forcing the design team to be as lean as possible because of limited funding, and allowing the company to experiment with operational use of an aircraft built using some unconventional manufacturing processes, Davis adds.
The Phantom Works name was only reestablished in February; previously the company referred to the division as Advanced Systems. With reinstatement of the older name, Davis says the company is returning to a tradition of prototyping. Advanced Systems had been mainly focused on capturing new programs, detracting from work on future technologies.
The Pentagon has fewer programs today than in previous decades. And, after industry consolidation in the 1990s there are fewer companies in the market. Against this backdrop Davis says he is trying to select prototyping programs that mature technologies the Pentagon is likely to need before it lays out its requirements in forthcoming programs.
?When you do things like this, you do gamble,? Davis says. ?And, this is about taking risks and knowing how to manage them.? With many analysts suggesting that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter could be the last manned fighter, it is clear that future players in aerospace must tackle the challenges of developing and operating unmanned systems, including vehicle design, command and control technologies, and data transfer and exploitation. ?If we didn?t start to move faster, we might be left behind,? he said.
The Phantom Ray is not unlike Lockheed Martin?s 2007 unveiling of the Polecat UAS, a flying demonstrator with a stealthy, delta-wing shape spearheaded by that company?s advanced arm, the Skunk Works. Unfortunately, the Polecat crashed after its third flight test. Both companies are clearly struggling to prove they are relevant in the large UAS market space, dominated by Northrop Grumman and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, developer of the Predator and Reaper product lines.
Davis intends to begin Phantom Ray taxi tests with the demonstrator in spring 2010. The Phantom Ray is a renamed X-45C, three of which were ordered to demonstrate land-based UCAS requirements for the U.S. Air Force. One full-up aircraft still stands, the Phantom Ray, and Boeing still has the structure for what would have been the second X-45C. The engines from the X-45 program were sold after its collapse, and the aircraft is now sitting in a shop here without a powerplant. It is slated to receive its General Electric F404-GE-102D engine in time to start engine runs early next year.
Some of the outer skins of the aircraft have been removed to allow engineers to verify that onboard wiring remains functional; the air vehicle was in storage |
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