The admiral in charge of the Navy’s drone development says there will be “no new weapons development program” for the drone the Navy wants to operate on an aircraft carrier.
Rear Adm. Matthias Winter told a drone-industry conference on Wednesday that the Navy isn’t going to design any new weapons for its future Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike System, or UCLASS. The futuristic drone, which the Navy wants to take off and land from an aircraft carrier at the click of a mouse, will use weapons already in the magazines of aircraft carriers.
In other words, even though the UCLASS will likely be the most advanced drone in the U.S. fleet, its weapons — most likely missiles — are going to be familiar.
Very little has been public about the weapons that the UCLASS will carry. Winter, a senior official with the Navy’s aviation branch, indicated that’s because little has been decided about them. The demonstration model built for UCLASS, the batwing-shaped X-47B, will “never carry a weapon,” Winter said in response to a Danger Room question about UCLASS’ weapons systems.
The Navy intends to issue a solicitation to defense companies as early as this year for industry to compete for what UCLASS should actually look like. Winter said the Navy plans on a “dialog” with defense companies about the weapons systems aboard the carrier drone, and how it integrates into the other systems on the drone, rather than a set Navy dictate. “There will be strike capability as part of this solicitation,” Winter said, without elaboration. “The specifics will be in the trade space.”
Ruling out weapons aboard the X-47B demonstrator raises an issue for UCLASS. Since the demonstrator’s tests, currently occurring at Patuxent River, Maryland, are supposed to inform the specifications for UCLASS, how can the Navy learn anything about operating UCLASS’ weapons systems and integrating them with the other systems on the drone?
Winter said that the Navy staff is talking with fleet commanders to understand the “best strike capability that the UCLASS should carry.”
“I will tell you that it will be something that, from a munitions perspective, it will be something that’s already been certified … that is carried in our magazines on our aircraft carriers,” Winter continued. “There is no new weapons development program associated with UCLASS, and that strike capability will be organic to the UCLASS system.”
The point of the program is hardly just lethality. UCLASS is supposed to provide persistent surveillance, intelligence and reconnaissance for an aircraft carrier battle group as well. Testing is underway with the X-47B to understand how the futuristic drone will operate alongside a deck crew used to shepherding human pilots, and alongside manned Navy jets in the air. The Navy also wants a common operating architecture that will allow it to control its multiple drones and robots — including UCLASS and, Winter said, also its Tomahawk missiles that are already kind of drone-like — and seamlessly share data.
By the spring, the Navy intends to launch the X-47B from an aircraft carrier out at sea for the first time. That’s meant to keep the Navy on track to getting its follow-on, the UCLASS, onto a carrier and into the fleet by 2019.
Navy: No New Weapons System on Our Future Carrier-Based Drone
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Navy: No New Weapons System on Our Future Carrier-Based Drone
