Landing drones on carriers

They can, as long as the weather is calm and clear. [Link]

The Navy’s top admiral told a think-tank audience yesterday he wants more unmanned aircraft in the sea service, and he wants ‘em in a hurry. In particular, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead said he’d like a robotic attack aircraft that can land and take off from a carrier. As it happens, I saw a full-scale mock-up of just such a plane a few weeks ago.

The X-47B is expected to make its first flight by the end of the year and could be making autonomous carrier landings as soon as 2011. In the meantime, drone-maker Northrop Grumman decided the show the thing off to the press at Edwards Air Force Base.

It’s no secret that unmanned aerial vehicles are becoming the preferred eyes in the sky and weapons platform for the military when it comes to combat zones. But so far the drones have been limited to operating from established air bases and flying relatively slow and easy, high above the action. The X-47B has the potential to change all that.

Northrup Grumman’s Tighe Parmenter says the X-47B is a test vehicle designed to demonstrate that a tailess, stealthy, unmanned aircraft can operate in the carrier environment. If the unmanned aircraft performs as planned, “it’s likely the Navy will pick a design like this to replace the F/A-18 Hornet.” The X-47B has a wingspan of just over 62 feet, has a range of more than 2,000 miles and can carry 4,500 pounds of internally stored bombs.

The bad news is the tailess, flying wing planform of the X-47B comes with some inherent stability and low speed flying issues that make the take off and landing from an aircraft carrier a real engineering challenge. The good news is Northrup Grumman has a lot of experience with the flying wing design, most recently with the B-2 bomber.

Landing an airplane on an aircraft carrier is considered one of the most difficult things to do in aviation. The Navy wants this experimental craft to do it autonomously — no humans involved. The X-47B will have to be able to take off and land from an aircraft carrier deck without a pilot sitting at a remote control station; that’ll set it apart from today’s drones, like the Predator.  Taking off isn’t too much of an issue. Landing is where the engineers will earn their paycheck.