BAE SYSTEMS Achieves First Untethered Flight of Vertical-Takeoff Unmanned Aerial Vehicle.

LOS ANGELES -- BAE Systems has achieved the first untethered flight of its second-generation ducted-fan unmanned aerial vehicle. The vertical-launch aircraft, built for risk reduction on the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's (DARPA) Organic Air Vehicle Class II (OAV II) program, twice completed a course of 10 waypoints at Southern California's Hansen Field.

The seven-minute flight of the ducted-fan aircraft, similar to a design the company is fielding as part of DARPA's OAV II competition, followed more than 100 tests conducted with a safety tether over the past several months.

"This flight validates our approach to fulfilling the OAV II mission and punctuates what has been a highly successful flight test program," said Tom Hyde, BAE Systems' director of UAV programs. BAE Systems in late 2004 received a multimillion-dollar DARPA contract to participate in the first phase of the OAV II program. The contract calls for the company to design a UAV for operation in diverse missions such as environment reconnaissance and surveillance, path-finding for friendly ground vehicles, maneuver force protection, and targeting for non-line-of-sight fire operations.

BAE Systems developed the aircraft as part of an independent R&D effort to design and demonstrate a family of ducted-fan UAVs. The ducted-fan design shrouds the fan, making it ideally suited for company- and platoon-level operations in which takeoffs and landings occur in close proximity to the warfighter.

The three-phase program is intended to yield a vehicle of sufficient maturity to transition into an Army System Development and Demonstration program to fulfill the Army's requirement for a Class II UAV. Three suppliers have fielded designs during the program's first phase. During the second phase, scheduled to begin in June, DARPA will proceed with exercising options with one or more contractors.

BAE Systems is an international company engaged in the development, delivery, and support of advanced defense and aerospace systems in the air, on land, at sea and in space. BAE Systems North America is one of America's foremost national security, aerospace and information systems companies.