FIRST TESTS FOR FUTURE ROBOT BOMBER A SUCCESS.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE - A computer-controlled aircraft-testing technology for a future robot bomber completed its first set of tests successfully, Defense Department officials said.

The two X-45A Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle aircraft, being tested at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Dryden Flight Research Center, completed 16 flights totaling nearly 13 hours of flight time, reaching a top altitude of 35,000 feet and a speed of approximately 525 mph.

``I'm extremely proud of our joint team of DARPA, Air Force, NASA and Boeing personnel for their accomplishments,'' said Air Force Col. Earl Wyatt, the program manager. ``When we first flew last May, the team committed to completing Block 1 demonstrations by February 2003, and we did it.''

The Defense Department is developing UCAVs with the goal of using them to find and destroy enemy anti-aircraft missiles, guns and radar. The UCAVs would fly themselves with preprogrammed computer mission plans, but ground controllers can interact and change the aircraft's mission plan in flight.

The tests included demonstrating the planes' ability to arrive at a designated spot at a set time using preprogrammed flight plans and the ability to fly back home in the event of a communications failure.

The program is being conducted by a joint team that includes the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, NASA and the Boeing Co.

A milestone was demonstrating what program officials call four- dimensional navigation - the ability to reach a given latitude, longitude and altitude at a specified time. The X-45A automatically adjusted its speed to overcome head winds and changed its flight plan to arrive at the specified points at the times commanded by an operator on the ground.

Four-dimensional navigation is important because Defense Department officials want to produce unmanned combat aircraft that can operate in packs, with up to four aircraft being monitored by one operator. Four- dimensional navigation would allow the aircraft to arrive simultaneously at a designated rendezvous point and form up for an attack, reducing the operator's workload.

The second phase of testing will run through this fall. Defense officials want to be able to demonstrate a coordinated attack, using inert weapons, against a target by the two aircraft.

Affordability is also a major objective of the program. Defense officials want a UCAV system that would cost half that of a manned fighter and be 75 percent less expensive to operate and maintain.

The two X-45A airplanes are viewed as the first steppingstones toward evaluating technologies and designs the Defense Department wants to incorporate into the UCAV.

The UCAV is envisioned to carry as many as 12 precision-guided bombs and fly up to 900 miles to a battlefield and for 30 minutes over the battlefield, then return.

The UCAV concept calls for the airplane to be designed so that it can be disassembled and placed in a small container for storage up to 10 years, then reassembled in one hour.

The two X-45As were built by Boeing Phantom Works under a $256 million cost-share agreement with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Air Force.

Each X-45A is about 26 feet long and has a wingspan of about 33 feet - about the same wingspan as an F-16 fighter but little more than half the length.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

(color) This is an artist's conception of an X-45A Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle.

Boeing