Boeing's look at the future of war
Unmanned combat aircraft as the next wave
By JAMES WALLACE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
Wednesday, December 7, 2005
When the Boeing Co. lost the Joint Strike Fighter competition to Lockheed Martin in 2001, its days as a fighter-jet maker may have appeared over.
The Boeing F-15 and F-18 fighter programs were nearing the end, and the company was merely a supplier to Lockheed Martin's F/A-22 program.
But here comes Boeing's X-45C for the Air Force.
Just as the 787 is critical to Boeing's commercial jetliner future, the X-45C represents the company's future in fighters.
It will be nearly as big as an F-16, well-armed and able to fly at close to the speed of sound.
Only the X-45C won't have an onboard pilot. It will be unmanned.
The pilot, or "coach," could be thousands of miles away from the battlefield, giving commands to the stealth combat vehicle from a computer console in a portable trailer. But this pilot will not be moving a control stick to fly the vehicle. The X-45C will fly itself and make critical decisions on its own.
"It's fly-by-mouse," quipped David Koopersmith, Boeing's X-45 program manager.
He was in Seattle Tuesday with a full-scale mock-up of the X-45C to show the 300 or so Boeing engineers who are developing the complex software for the fighter and the ground-based computers that will direct it. The work is being done at Boeing's Developmental Center complex across from Boeing Field. The upper fuselage composite skin of the X-45 also is produced here.
The first of two X-45Cs are in development in St. Louis, where the program has its headquarters. A third eventually will be built.
"It is a hunter," said Boeing's Steve Teske, who will work with the pilots who are taught to operate the X-45C.
The first flight is scheduled for 2007. A four-year test-flight and demonstration program is scheduled to end in 2012.
Northrop Grumman is developing its own unmanned fighter, the X-47B, that can take off from and land on an aircraft carrier. The Pentagon eventually could pick either the X-45C or X-47B, or perhaps both, for production.
The X-45C represents a quantum leap in technology and capability over all other unmanned aircraft, such as the Predator, being used today for CIA and U.S. military missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The slow-moving Predator can carry two Hellfire missiles. A missile from a Predator is believed to have killed a top alQaida leader in Pakistan last week.
But the Predator is essentially a surveillance drone.
The X-45C will be a true combat vehicle, designed to attack in swarms on the opening day of a war, taking out enemy missile batteries and anti-aircraft sensors -- the kind of high-risk missions that can cost fighter pilots their lives. The operators of Predators in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, are actually flying the drones from an Air Force base in the United States.
Koopersmith sees a potential market for "hundreds" of such unmanned combat vehicles for the U.S. military.
Boeing first built two smaller X-45As that recently competed more than 60 test flights at Edwards Air Force Base in California and laid the groundwork for development of the full-size fighter, the X-45C.
In their final test in August, the two X-45As used their onboard decision-making software to determine the best routes through a "battlefield" measuring about 30 by 60 miles. They then performed simulated attacks on ground-based radars and missile launchers.
The X-45 came out of Boeing's Phantom Works, under a $1.2 billion contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, the agency that spurred development of the F-117 stealth fighter.
Management of the Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems project, or J-UCAS, recently changed hands from DARPA to a joint Air Force and Navy program office with headquarters at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.
The program's "unique combat versatility will change our perspective of airpower projection in much the same way that stealth technology did when it was introduced 30 years ago," Tony Tather, director of DARPA, said in a statement last month.
The X-45A weighed only 8,000 pounds empty. The empty weight of the X-45C will be 18,000 pounds. It has a wingspan of 49 feet (about the same as the F-117) and is 36 feet long.
It will be powered by an F404-GE-102D engine, the same kind used on Boeing's two-engine F-18.
The X-45C will be able to fly at 40,000 feet and at Mach .85. It will carry two 2,000-pound precision-guided bombs or up to eight small-diameter bombs. Its operational combat radius will be 1,100 to 1,300 nautical miles.
That's far more range than manned fighters have without being refueled.
The third X-45C to be developed later will be able to be refueled in flight.
Koopersmith would not provide a price for the X-45C. But it will cost less per pound than a manned fighter, he said.
There are other savings, too, noted Bob Kornegay, Boeing's X-45C business development manager.
The X-45C will be capable of fully autonomous flight.
"Go out and do the job and report back later" is how Teske described it.
But that won't happen.
When it comes time for the X-45C to drop its bombs, Teske said, the pilot in charge on the ground will make that call, not the onboard computers.
By JAMES WALLACE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
Wednesday, December 7, 2005
When the Boeing Co. lost the Joint Strike Fighter competition to Lockheed Martin in 2001, its days as a fighter-jet maker may have appeared over.
The Boeing F-15 and F-18 fighter programs were nearing the end, and the company was merely a supplier to Lockheed Martin's F/A-22 program.
But here comes Boeing's X-45C for the Air Force.
Just as the 787 is critical to Boeing's commercial jetliner future, the X-45C represents the company's future in fighters.
It will be nearly as big as an F-16, well-armed and able to fly at close to the speed of sound.
Only the X-45C won't have an onboard pilot. It will be unmanned.
The pilot, or "coach," could be thousands of miles away from the battlefield, giving commands to the stealth combat vehicle from a computer console in a portable trailer. But this pilot will not be moving a control stick to fly the vehicle. The X-45C will fly itself and make critical decisions on its own.
"It's fly-by-mouse," quipped David Koopersmith, Boeing's X-45 program manager.
He was in Seattle Tuesday with a full-scale mock-up of the X-45C to show the 300 or so Boeing engineers who are developing the complex software for the fighter and the ground-based computers that will direct it. The work is being done at Boeing's Developmental Center complex across from Boeing Field. The upper fuselage composite skin of the X-45 also is produced here.
The first of two X-45Cs are in development in St. Louis, where the program has its headquarters. A third eventually will be built.
"It is a hunter," said Boeing's Steve Teske, who will work with the pilots who are taught to operate the X-45C.
The first flight is scheduled for 2007. A four-year test-flight and demonstration program is scheduled to end in 2012.
Northrop Grumman is developing its own unmanned fighter, the X-47B, that can take off from and land on an aircraft carrier. The Pentagon eventually could pick either the X-45C or X-47B, or perhaps both, for production.
The X-45C represents a quantum leap in technology and capability over all other unmanned aircraft, such as the Predator, being used today for CIA and U.S. military missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The slow-moving Predator can carry two Hellfire missiles. A missile from a Predator is believed to have killed a top alQaida leader in Pakistan last week.
But the Predator is essentially a surveillance drone.
The X-45C will be a true combat vehicle, designed to attack in swarms on the opening day of a war, taking out enemy missile batteries and anti-aircraft sensors -- the kind of high-risk missions that can cost fighter pilots their lives. The operators of Predators in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, are actually flying the drones from an Air Force base in the United States.
Koopersmith sees a potential market for "hundreds" of such unmanned combat vehicles for the U.S. military.
Boeing first built two smaller X-45As that recently competed more than 60 test flights at Edwards Air Force Base in California and laid the groundwork for development of the full-size fighter, the X-45C.
In their final test in August, the two X-45As used their onboard decision-making software to determine the best routes through a "battlefield" measuring about 30 by 60 miles. They then performed simulated attacks on ground-based radars and missile launchers.
The X-45 came out of Boeing's Phantom Works, under a $1.2 billion contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, the agency that spurred development of the F-117 stealth fighter.
Management of the Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems project, or J-UCAS, recently changed hands from DARPA to a joint Air Force and Navy program office with headquarters at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.
The program's "unique combat versatility will change our perspective of airpower projection in much the same way that stealth technology did when it was introduced 30 years ago," Tony Tather, director of DARPA, said in a statement last month.
The X-45A weighed only 8,000 pounds empty. The empty weight of the X-45C will be 18,000 pounds. It has a wingspan of 49 feet (about the same as the F-117) and is 36 feet long.
It will be powered by an F404-GE-102D engine, the same kind used on Boeing's two-engine F-18.
The X-45C will be able to fly at 40,000 feet and at Mach .85. It will carry two 2,000-pound precision-guided bombs or up to eight small-diameter bombs. Its operational combat radius will be 1,100 to 1,300 nautical miles.
That's far more range than manned fighters have without being refueled.
The third X-45C to be developed later will be able to be refueled in flight.
Koopersmith would not provide a price for the X-45C. But it will cost less per pound than a manned fighter, he said.
There are other savings, too, noted Bob Kornegay, Boeing's X-45C business development manager.
The X-45C will be capable of fully autonomous flight.
"Go out and do the job and report back later" is how Teske described it.
But that won't happen.
When it comes time for the X-45C to drop its bombs, Teske said, the pilot in charge on the ground will make that call, not the onboard computers.
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