ROBO-SOFTWARE REVS UP FIGHTER PLANES.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE - Two unmanned aircraft that could lead to creation of robot bombers entered a new phase of flight testing with the addition of ``smart software'' meant to let them adapt to changing combat conditions and coordinate attacks.

The two Boeing X-45A aircraft being tested at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Dryden Flight Research Center began flight tests this month with the new software aimed at demonstrating a coordinated attack, using dummy weapons, against a target by the two aircraft.

``It's a smart software,'' said Mike Heinz, Boeing's vice president and general manager of unmanned systems. ``The software will allow the aircraft to adapt to combat conditions autonomously. One of the goals is cooperative operations.''

The Defense Department is developing unmanned combat aircraft to conduct a variety of missions for both the Air Force and the Navy. Those missions would include surveillance, scrambling enemy electronic communications and attacking anti-aircraft missiles, guns and radar.

Unmanned Global Hawk and Predator spy planes have already been used in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and Predators have fired guided missiles at vehicles. Global Hawks are controlled by computers, the Predators by pilots on the ground.

The worldwide market for unmanned aircraft is about $2 billion a year, Heinz said, and is expected to grow into the tens of billions of dollars a year. Boeing figures unmanned aircraft could mean as much as $1 billion a year to their company alone.

``The incubation period (for unmanned aircraft) has ended,'' Heinz said.

Heinz said initial operations with such aircraft could occur perhaps as early as 2010.

The new UCAVs - unmanned combat aerial vehicles - would fly themselves with preprogrammed computer mission plans, but ground controllers could interact and change an aircraft's mission plan in flight.

The program is being overseen by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the same organization that launched the F-117 stealth fighter program.

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.

Angular and ungainly, 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.

DARPA wants both the Air Force and Navy aircraft to have a range of 1,300 miles and to carry 4,500 pounds of either equipment or weapons. DARPA wants the aircraft to be able to stay over a target for two hours.

Northrop Grumman is also conducting work for the Defense Department in developing a joint-service combat aircraft.

In 2007, the Defense Department plans to conduct an assessment of the aircraft to determine how well they can meet their needs. That testing will provide the Pentagon with information about what capabilities to pursue in follow-on developments of the aircraft.

In the initial flight tests, which ran from May 2002 to March, the planes showed they could arrive at a designated spot at a set time using preprogrammed flight plans and that they could guide themselves home in the event of a communications failure.

Initially, the Boeing aircraft were being developed solely for the Air Force, but the Pentagon has now merged that effort with a similar program that had been started by the Navy. Northrop Grumman had been working on an unmanned aircraft solely for the Navy.

Heinz said Boeing is trying to develop its Navy version of the fighter with as much compatibility with the Air Force fighter as possible.

A larger X-45 that will be capable of carrying two 2,000-pound bombs is expected to begin flight tests in 2006, Boeing officials said.

Jim Skeen, [phone]

james.skeen(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

The pair of Boeing X-45A planes with adaptive software are being tested at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center.

Jim Skeen/Staff Photographer