[Corrected description of Navy test sequence] Unmanned aircraft are relatively easy to fly. Landing one without crashing is hard. Getting one to take off from the narrow, pitching deck of an aircraft carrier is harder still. Landing on a carrier? That’s hard enough to give human pilots nervous breakdowns. Soon, it will be the final […]
It’s hard enough for a human pilot to take off from the cramped and pitching deck of a US Navy aircraft carrier. Today, for the first time in history, a Remotely Piloted Aircraft did it. You can bet that military leaders in Beijing and Tehran sat up and took note as the batwinged X-47B drone […]
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90 years ago, in the fall of 1922, US Navy pilots made the first landings on America’s first-ever aircraft carrier. (Okay, the British did it first). Just a few weeks from now, a Navy aircraft will make history again — except this time there won’t be a pilot. Meet the Navy’s new robotic Top Gun, […]
WASHINGTON: The Navy’s top admiral talked up cheap ships and high tech this morning, from laser weapons to a new double-decker version of the Mobile Landing Platform vessel (pictured above). Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert said precious little about the rolling budget cuts called sequestration. He clearly preferred to emphasize a bold vision […]
NAVAL AIR STATION PATUXENT RIVER: Landing a jet plane on an aircraft carrier is one of the hardest and most dangerous things a human being can do, with pilots’ stress levels spiking higher than in combat. Now the Navy is trying to teach a robot how to do it: The X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System, […]
WASHINGTON: The unmanned aircraft most likely to become the first to takeoff and land on aircraft carriers is moving to the next phase of testing, moving from Edwards Air Force Base to the Navy’s main operational test site at Patuxent River, Md. The X-47B, also known as the Navy’s UCAS-D, soared higher than 15,000 feet […]
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The U.S. Navy’s nuclear-powered aircraft carriers flight decks are some of the most chaotic and deadly real estate in the world. Teeming with scores of high-performance aircraft, wheeled vehicles and up to a thousand sailors generating up to several hundred sorties per day, flight decks “are fraught with danger,” the Naval Safety Center warned in […]
The Navy is testing the first unmanned aircraft designed to take off and land on aircraft carriers. In recent tests, Northrop Grumman’s X-47B was put through a rigorous set of tests in preparation for actual carrier landings and takeoffs, planned for 2013. Here’s a summary of the testing at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. During […]
On Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. military possessed just handful of robot aircraft. Today, the Air Force alone operates more than 50 drone “orbits,” each composed of four Predator or Reaper aircraft plus their ground-based control systems and human operators. Smaller Navy, Marine and Army drones number in the thousands. Since they do not need […]
For the first time, the Navy and Northrop Grumman have demonstrated the ability to make an unmanned aircraft make carrier landings and take-offs today, using an F-18 rigged to fly the same way. It is part of the Navy’s effort to develop a stealthy and unmanned aircraft –UCAS-D, also known as the X-47B — able […]
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