X-47B Sorties Ramping Up

Aviation Week And Space Technology ^ | 2/11/2011 | By Guy Norris, Amy Butler

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

The U.S. Navy is building on the successful first flight of the stealthy, tailless Northrop Grumman X-47B demonstrator as a pivotal step toward the long-held goal of marrying persistent, autonomous unmanned intelligence and strike aircraft with the reach of its fleet of aircraft carriers.

“We’re celebrating the centennial of Naval aviation, and if we fast-forward 100 years, then we’ve added three words—unmanned, autonomous and LO [low-observable] relevant,” says Capt. Jaime Engdahl, the Navy’s Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) project director. The X-47B flight-test program, which began with a 29-min. flight at Edwards AFB, Calif., on Feb. 4 will answer questions about what it takes “to put unmanned, autonomous and LO-relevant into the carrier environment.”

Though proving the viability of the once unthinkable concept of autonomous combat air operations from the carrier, UCAS is also a critical technology stepping-stone to the Navy’s planned Unmanned Carrier-Launched Surveillance Systems (Uclass) program. “Just as important is the technology we embed into the carrier itself,” says Engdahl, referring to the data link and related communication breakthroughs that UCAS-D is expected to demonstrate as part of a planned seamless integration of unmanned aircraft into carrier air wing operations.

[DesScorp]

"The B-47 was a beautiful bird"

The Stratojet was ugliness personified. When you sit a B-52 next to a B-47, it's kind of like looking at two sisters, one is hot and the other hit every branch falling out of the ugly tree. You see the resemblance and yet you wonder how they're related in the first place.

[zot]

You have the description of these two aircraft precisely backward. The B-47 was beautiful. The B-52 was and is ugly. Hell, I thought everybody knew that.

[wita]

I’m thinking carrier landings would be more difficult.