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Northrop wins Navy UCAS bid over Boeing

Northrop Grumman has beaten a Boeing team as the Navy’s choice to develop the Unmanned Combat Air System Carrier Demonstration — intended to prove the technology to provide the fleet’s aircraft carriers with a long-range pilotless jet strike aircraft.

The award of a $636 million cost-plus-incentive-fee development contract was announced by the Navy late Aug. 1.

The competition to develop the aircraft — also known as UCAS-N, for UCAS-Navy — was between Boeing’s X-45N and Northrop Grumman’s X-47B test aircraft. Northrop now will be the prime contractor to build and fly the new aircraft.

Both single-engine jet competitors were part of the Joint Unmanned Combat Air System (J-UCAS) program, which was dissolved early in 2006. J-UCAS, intended to provide an unmanned aircraft for both the Navy and Air Force, was dropped in the Quadrennial Defense Review, which favored concentrating development on a long-range carrier-based strike aircraft.

Boeing’s X-45 was first developed as a land-based aircraft, while Northrop’s X-47 was designed from the outset as a carrier plane — an aspect Northrop felt gave it a leg up on the competition.

The program is intended “to demonstrate critical carrier suitability technologies of a Low Observable-Platform Air Vehicle in a relevant environment,” Lt. Cmdr. John Schofield, a Navy spokesman at the Pentagon, said in July.

The program “will launch a technical effort to demonstrate the aircraft carrier suitability of an autonomous low-observable unmanned air vehicle, as well as demonstrate critical aircraft carrier suitability technologies in a relevant environment,” the Naval Air Systems Command said in a statement released late Aug. 1.

According to the contract announcement, Northrop will deliver trade studies, analyses, software, reports and flight-test data on the aircraft. The program will involve shipboard operation, including catapult takeoffs, arrested landings and flight in the immediate vicinity of an aircraft carrier. The air vehicle will not carry weapons, NAVAIR said.

“This specific contract is for technology development and demonstration and will not be an operational system,” Capt. Rich Brasel, program manager for NAVAIR’s technology demonstration effort here, said in the statement. “But through it, we will develop knowledge, skills and technologies specific to operating an autonomous low-observable unmanned air vehicle in an aircraft carrier environment. This is a critical step in efforts to develop future Naval Aviation combat capabilities.”

Northrop’s Integrated Systems, Western Region sector, will build the aircraft in Palmdale, Calif., and systems integration will be performed at San Diego.

The system will be composed of two low-observable UAVs, two mission control segments and a support segment. The system will be capable of autonomous launch, recovery and operations in the Carrier Control Area, according to NAVAIR.

Flight testing is scheduled to begin in late 2009 and culminate with carrier flight operations in 2013, the Navy said.