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We have had a lot of talk this year about UFOs, with sightings popping up all over the place, so much so that the United States created a task force to deal with it all. What was spotted today flying over the Philippines certainly could be a UFO from beyond earth, but it’s just as likely to be a trial run of a super-secret and very powerful stealth plane of the United States, Russia or China. Watching Joe Biden handle the Afghanistan situation is no doubt emboldening our enemies to a very high degree. “And he spake a parable unto...

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...

The next generation of Top Guns may be gamer geeks. That's because the X-47B just took its very first flight, heralding a whole new era of military flying--automatic or remote-piloted, stealthy, deadly combat aircraft. Technically the X-47B is an unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV), but what it really is is an evolution of those Global Hawk and Predator drone aircraft that made the Iraq War look like a computer game when viewed at the military's tech hubs, mixed in with the same kind of stealth technology that makes the B-2 Spirit bomber such a powerful, frightening tool of force projection....

Northrop Grumman’s X-47B unmanned combat air system (UCAS-D) demonstrator successfully completed its long-delayed first flight at Edwards AFB, Calif on Feb 4. The stealthy, single-engine UCAS took off early in the afternoon Pacific time and landed some 29 mins later, having achieved an altitude of 5,000-ft. Aimed at gathering air vehicle management system data, the first flight also marks the start of a roughly 50-flight, year-long Block 1 envelope expansion test campaign at Edwards AFB. Initial flight rate is expected to be once per week, rising to twice a week later in 2011. Northrop and U.S. Navy officials passed the...

Are airplane pilots destined for the same fate as flight navigators and engineers? Will they be replaced by lines of code, electrons and data-linked commands from faceless controllers beyond the horizon? However unlikely that scenario, the trend is worth noting. As is being demonstrated daily in thousands of operations around the world, the black boxes on a growing number of aircraft are so "smart," they obviate the need to have a human operator on board to complete a given mission. Pointing to the hundreds of automated takeoffs and landings performed by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) every day, David Vos, senior...

The U.S. Navy is planning to demonstrate an armed, sensor-equipped, carrier-based unmanned combat aircraft system (UCAS) by 2018, as a follow-on to carrier-suitability and autonomous aerial-refueling demonstrations planned for completion in 2013. A request for information (RFI) will be released this year, according to Rear Adm. William Shannon, program executive officer for unmanned aviation and strike weapons, speaking Feb. 17 at Aviation Week’s Defense Technology and Requirements conference in Washington. The program could be worth as much as $2 billion, with major funding starting in Fiscal 2013. The RFI will be open to all manufacturers, and not automatically an extension...

Personnel from the Navy Unmanned Combat Air System (N-UCAS) program team and industry partner Northrop Grumman Corporation are underway with USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) to test the integration of existing ship systems with new systems that will support the X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstration (UCAS-D). This effort will reduce program risk and is one of many steps toward the X-47B's first carrier arrested landing or "trap." The X-47B will be the first unmanned jet aircraft to take off and land aboard an aircraft carrier. With a 62ft wingspan and length of 38ft, the X-47B is about 87 percent...

The Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is an integral part of today's modern armed forces and considered as the next generation Airborne Reconnaissance. US and Israel are the most prominent users of UAV technology, their companies are successful in manufacturing them and exporting it to other countries. UAVs are said as a predecessor of ‘aerial torpedoes’ built during World War-1. The UAV is an aircraft which are remotely piloted, they are mostly assigned for the Dull, Dirty and Dangerous missions. They consist of high resolution video, digital imagery and sensors. They cover large area through way point tracking which is programmed...

A small, experimental jet intended to demonstrate a UAV's ability to operate off aircraft carriers just might see operational action, according to two top US Navy officials. The aircraft is the X-47B, being developed by Northrop Grumman under the Navy Unmanned Combat Air System (N-UCAS) program. Roughly $2 billion has been added by the Pentagon over the next five years to give the program a major boost. Most of that money, said Rear Adm. Bill Burke, was at the behest of the new Quadrennial Defence Review (QDR). "What we think it ought to do is deliver some sort of capability,"...

The U.S. Navy has sped up its efforts to ready its X-47B UCAS (Unmanned Combat Aerial System), for carrier operations. This includes an additional $2 billion for development, in an attempt to have the X-47B demonstrating the ability to regularly operate from a carrier, and perform combat (including reconnaissance and surveillance) operations, within five years. Senior admirals see this as a way to solve several problems. One is the dominance of the U.S. Air Force in UAV operations (with their fleet of Predator, Reaper and Global Hawk UAVs). Then there is the growing cost of the new F-35, that is...

The $2-billion question in development of a new bomber is whether a major black-world demonstration program is already underway, with Northrop Grumman as the contractor. This hypothesis makes sense of a series of clues that have appeared since 2005. In that year, Scott Winship, program manager for Northrop Grumman’s X-47 unmanned combat aircraft system (UCAS), mentioned that the company—responding to a U.S. Air Force interest in a bigger version of the then-ongoing Joint UCAS project—had proposed an X-47C with very long endurance, a 10,000-lb.-plus weapon load and a 172-ft. wingspan, the same as a B-2. The idea was to match...

The next generation of unmanned weapons systems entered a new phase this fall with the transition of the Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems, or J-UCAS, program from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, to a joint Air Force-Navy management team. The program is intended to develop and test the technologies necessary to field fleets of unmanned aircraft capable of operating on their own to attack and shut down enemy air defenses. The full effect of the transition is not yet known, as funding and program decisions remain to be settled with the fiscal year 2007 budget. Created...

Airport expansion takes flight By AARON LONDON Staff Writer Last update: 14 March 2004 BUNNELL -- The sky might be the limit for pilots taking off from the Flagler County Airport, but county officials draw the line at forcing people to give up their property to expand the facility. County commissioners reviewed an updated master plan last week for the airport that included five scenarios for growth. In the end, commissioners decided to pursue the most ambitious option, a $28.4 million, 20-year plan to move the airport's main runway 400 feet south and lengthen it by 2,000 feet, begin...

Two examples of ground-breaking advancements in aerospace from the Antelope Valley have been honored by Popular Science magazine as this year's "Best of What's New." Burt Rutan's entry into the civilian space race, called Tier One, won the Grand Award in the space and aviation category. Also honored in that category was the Shaped Sonic Boom Demonstration, an effort by Northrop Grumman Corp. and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to lessen the strength of sonic booms created by supersonic aircraft. Consisting of the rotund SpaceShipOne spacecraft and the spindly White Knight carrier aircraft, Tier One is the latest endeavor...