Artist’s Concept of the General Atomics MQ-25 Stingray. GA Image used with permission
The Navy’s pilotless carrier-based air tanker bidders are beginning to announce development partners.
Boeing’s MQ-25 unmanned aircraft system is completing engine runs before heading to the flight ramp for deck handling demonstrations next year. The aircraft is designed to provide the U.S. Navy with refueling capabilities that would extend the combat range of deployed Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet, Boeing EA-18G Growler, and Lockheed Martin F-35C fighters. Boeing photo.
Boeing unveiled the first photo of its entry in the MQ-25A Stingray unmanned aerial vehicle competition today. Read More
Undated U.S. Central Command Photo of an alleged ISIS quadcopter captured by Iraqi Forces via DefenseOne
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – Budget uncertainty is challenging the services as they try to modernize, both to keep up with enemy threats that are advancing around the globe and to replacing aging equipment near the end of its service life, the services’ second-in-commands said today. Read More
The following is the March 2015 Pentagon Inspector General report — released last week — on the use of military unmanned aerial vehicles over U.S. soil. Read More
Screen shot of an Iranian video claiming to be spy footage of USS Harry S. Truman from an Iranian UAV.
Officials at U.S. 5th Fleet confirmed to USNI News Iranian forces flew an unmanned aerial vehicle over French carrier Charles de Gaulle (R91) and USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) earlier this month in a Friday statement to USNI News. Read More
A 3D printed aircraft has successfully launched off the front of a Royal Navy warship and landed safely on a Dorset beach off HMS Mersey. UK Royal Navy Photo
LONDON — While U.S. Navy sailors have trialed the use of additive manufacturing (3D printing) technology to build a miniature quadcopter aboard USS Essex (LHD-2) and fly it around the hanger deck, it’s their British counterparts who were first to launch a 3D-printed fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle from a ship. Read More
USS John Paul Jones (DDG 53) launches a Standard Missile (SM) 2 during a live-fire test of the ship’s Aegis weapons system on Feb. 8, 2014. US Navy Photo
The U.S. Navy’s Aegis program was born as the solution to a physics problem: Given that hostile variable-geometry wing Soviet Tupolev Tu-22M Backfire bombers travel at speeds approaching Mach 2, what would a ship-based radar and missile system need to do to hurl an object into the air to intercept an object flying at almost twice the speed of sound?
Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton. US Navy Photo
Unmanned systems continue to deliver new and enhanced battlefield capabilities to the warfighter. While the demand for unmanned systems continues unabated today, a number of factors will influence unmanned program development in the future. Read More
The X-47B on the deck of the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) on Nov. 10, 2013. US Navy Photo
The U.S. Navy appears to have shifted its position on the requirements for its next generation carrier-based unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), Navy officials told USNI News.
Instead of developing the planned Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) to only conduct operations in uncontested airspace, the service will instead pursue a design that can be adapted over time to operating against higher threat levels.
In an apparent reaction to the recently concluded multinational minesweeping exercise in the Persian Gulf and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s appearance before the United Nations, Iran released film and video of its latest unmanned aerial system (UAS). Iran calls the new UAS Shahed-129 (or Witness-129). The Guardian news website provided the following transcript of Iranian television coverage of the Shahed-129 flight demonstration: “The new drone . . . can carry out combat and reconnaissance missions with its 24-hour non-stop flight capability.” The transcript goes on to report, “home-made aircraft is capable of hitting targets at a distance of 1,700-2,000 kilometers… [and] can be equipped with electronic and communication systems including cameras which can capture and send live images.”
Images from Iranian television of the Shahed-129.
While the Shahed-129’s flight performance claims may be exaggerated, the system nonetheless will join several other indigenously manufactured Iranian unmanned aircraft. For U.S. sailors operating in the Persian Gulf sightings of Iranian-built drones are a common. The fact is, Iran has been manufacturing reconnaissance drones since the 1980s, when they began building and flying the Mohajer systems during the Iran-Iraq War. The Mohajer was followed by a line of indigenously built systems such as the mass produced Ababil. The smaller Ababil UAS has been exported to Hezbollah forces, who used it against Israel in the 2006 conflict in southern Lebanon. More recent reports indicate that Syrian government forces may be using this system to locate and target rebel forces in Syria. The Ababil also made headlines in February 2009 when an Iranian controlled drone was shot down by a US F-16 after making an incursion into Iraqi airspace. So clearly then the, Shahed-129 is just the latest in a long line of Iranian built systems that Iran routinely operates. By all appearances, robotic systems have been part of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s military arsenal since the early days of the revolution.
