Free Republic

Phantom Ray will pick up where the UCAS program left off in 2006 by further demonstrating Boeing’s unmanned systems development capabilities in a fighter-sized, state-of-the-art aerospace system. The Boeing UCAS program began with the X-45A, which successfully flew 64 times from 2002 to 2005. Those flights included a demonstration exercise with two X-45A aircraft that marked the first unmanned, autonomous multivehicle flight under the control of a single pilot...] ...Currently planned Dec. 2, the Air Force Flight Test Center’s B-52 will carry the X-51A to 50,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean then release it. A solid rocket booster from an...

CHICAGO, June 21, 2005 – Boeing and a team of flight control scientists from academia have demonstrated leading-edge flight control technologies that potentially could dramatically improve the mission effectiveness of advanced unmanned aerial vehicles. The effort is part of the Software Enabled Control program (SEC) sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), with technical direction from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. The demonstration flight, on May 26 at Victorville, Calif., involved the DARPA Renegade rotorcraft UAV, modified to include SEC hardware and software. During the flight, the SEC software assumed control of the Renegade to execute autonomous...