First flight planned for unmanned jet

[unhappycamper]

First flight planned for unmanned jet
By Gidget Fuentes - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Dec 22, 2009 15:12:01 EST

Trouble with engine start sequencing and propulsion acoustics delayed the planned December flight of an unmanned aerial system, which might form part of a fleet of unmanned, carrier-based bombers. Despite that delay in the first flight of the X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System-Demonstrator jet, program officials are confident they will see wheels up in early 2010.

The maiden flight will take place at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., sometime in the first three months of the year.

“It will be a very short flight. It will be a low-risk flight, so we won’t be flying high, fast, far,” said Cyndi Wegerbauer, a Northrop Grumman Integrated Systems spokeswoman in San Diego.

In the past year, teams from Naval Air Systems Command’s UCAS-D program office and Northrop Grumman Integrated Systems have put the X-47B through a series of preflight tests. They will put the innovative bat-wing shaped aircraft through low-speed taxi testing at Northrop Grumman’s manufacturing facility near Palmdale, in the Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles later this month or early next month, Wegerbauer said.

The second X-47B has been built and configured with an autonomous aerial refueling system and also will fly during 2010, she said.


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2009/12/navy_x47B_uav_122209w/



unhappycamper comment: Swell. An unmanned jet capable of carrying 2,000 pounds of bombs.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. This is the successor to the original JUCAS Program out of DARPA

The USAF pulled out and UCAS-D is the USN remnant. Its not nearly what the DARPA program intended, but it will prove automated carrier landings and aerial refueling.

JUCAS version of the X-47 had two bomb bays each capable of carrying a 2000 bomb or 6 Small Diameter Bombs.