Ping
I was wondering where someone got a B-47 to test.
Time to build a bunch of escort carrier-sized drone platforms.
We won’t.
China, India, Russia and France may.
Well, maybe not France...
Drones will be the death of us. No place to hide when the SHTF.
Northrop Grumman BUMP!
"Do you like surprises, Ben?"
Pretty much seeing the last or next to last generation of manned aircraft in the F 22, F 35.....
Imagine war when it is just geeks and their toys bombing the rest of us. The world will be their video game.
Big step if we can build 300 of them. Don’t have to worry about G Forces. Initial swarm to kill radar and kick the door in.
Heck, even Kara Hultgren managed to get it on the deck a few times.
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no more long flights in the navigator’s hole..
By: Zach Rosenberg Washington DC
Source: Flight International
The Northrop Grumman X-47B landed twice aboard the USS George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier, but a malfunction with one of its three navigation computers prevented a third landing. The aircraft subsequently diverted to Wallops Field, Virginia, as programmed, for a safe recovery.
"There are three redundant navigation computers on the X-47," says Capt Jaime Engdahl, the US Navy's programme manager for unmanned systems. "We saw an issue on one of those computers and decided we had done enough for the day, flew the aircraft back and landed it."
The aircraft makes its approaches autonomously, without human interference. The computers onboard the aircraft noted the anomaly affecting one of the three precision GPS computers, and though capable of landing using only one, the aircraft is coded to abort landing under those circumstances. After the automatic abort, the human controller elected to divert the aircraft instead of continuing.
"They're working through the data right now," says Carl Johnson, Northrop Grumman's programme manager. "In terms of a malfunction it's probably a minor issue, that when we reset the computers everything will be up and running and we'll have a fully functional aircraft."
Two X-47Bs are flying. The aircraft used for the test has the tail number 502. An identical aircraft, tail number 501, will likely be used for the next aircraft carrier test series on 15 July. If all goes well in the second series, the X-47B's tests will be completed and the aircraft retired. A manned Learjet using X-47B's software will conduct autonomous air-to-air refueling trials in 2014.
The lessons learned from the X-47B demonstrations will be used to address the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) programme, meant to essentially create an operational production UAV for aircraft carriers. Four companies - Northrop, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems - have been selected to perform design work.