News to me!!!!!  Be a shame though if the best we could do is an aircraft similar to one devloped in the 70's.  I know there is some sort of UCAV undergoing test in Australia at the mo, but cant seem to recal the name.

I think he probably means the UCAV.

 

AE - you're thinking of the Corax.

 

I very much doubt I we are developing a manned stealth aircraft. The costs would be enormous and the numbers required too few - we are much more likely to do so as part of a consortium.

 

I suppose Corax might develop into an unmanned stealth bomber of some sort - I know we're not in the Neuron project so it wouldn't be suprising if we weren't doing something in this area.

 

HALO is/was a UK programme that is connected to low observables and probably FOA/FOAS. Reports came out of its existence in the mid 1990s which talked about something called “High Agility, Low Observability”; other names include “High Altitude, Low Observability” and “HAwk Low Observables”. Pretty much nothing else is known about it. There is no evidence that it is a specific stealth aircraft design.

 

Reports from the mid to late 90s suggested that it was a series of technologies demonstrators designed to validate technologies related to the Tornado GR1/GR4 replacement. This could mean any number of things but the prevailing theory is that it involved the flight testing of stealth hardware on a BAE Systems Hawk (which lends credence to the HAwk Low Observables designation). It seems very possible that it may also have been connected to the Replica/Testbed RCS mock-up built by BAE Systems between 1994 and 1999.

 

There’s been a few rumours connected to it including the most widely known which was a sighting of an aircraft making an emergency landing at Boscombe Down in 1994 which witnesses describe as looking like a Tornado sized B-2. Officials say it was a Tornado. I think that might be where you get idea of it being like the F-117 from, I’ve never heard it myself. I also don’t really think much of this incident, 1994 seems like far too early for any aircraft that could be connected to HALO to be flying.   

 

At the moment the MoD denies the existence of any aircraft related project named HALO. I’ve been researching this for the last few years and I hope some new information will become available soon but I don’t think it’ll be much spectacular.

 

 

On Corax, that is a HALE URAV demonstrator that was built in 2004 and flown in 2005 (testing has now been completed). The aircraft was based on the previous UAV Raven (both being built by BAE Systems) which was also a technology demonstrator; it had the planform of a blended wing, tailless VLO UCAV and included numerous technologies pertinent to unmanned combat systems. It was not a combat capable aircraft however and was not technically speaking a UCAV in itself. The UAV was flight tested from December 2003 and is currently taking part in ground work at Warton. Both Corax and Raven flew at Woomera.

 

The MoD and a UK industry team are currently working up to launch a UCAV demonstrator programme that will likely run for around four years and have a budget of £150m-£250m. This contract should be signed by year end while industry partners have already done some work towards it.

 

None of that is connected to HALO in any direct way.