SEA GHOST Concept U.S. Navy announced on Aug. 14 that four Preliminary Design Review (PDR) contracts were awarded for the Unmanned Car...
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| SEA GHOST Concept |
U.S. Navy announced on Aug. 14 that four Preliminary Design Review (PDR) contracts were awarded for the Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) air vehicle program.
The four $15 million firm-fixed price contracts were awarded to Boeing Co., General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. The period of performance for the contracting efforts is approximately nine months.
UCLASS will be the first deployed carrier-based unmanned air system. It will provide persistent, unmanned, semi-autonomous, carrier-based Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Targeting (ISR &T) with precision strike capability to support 24/7 carrier operational coverage.
“The PDRs are intended to inform the Navy of technical risk, cost and design maturity of the Air Segment (AS), and allows the industry teams to better understand the program’s requirements across the entire UCLASS system to expeditiously deliver the unmanned carrier-based system to the fleet,”said Charlie Nava, UCLASS program manager.
The UCLASS system will consist of an air segment, a connectivity and control segment, a Carrier Vessel-Nuclear (CVN) segment (launch and recovery), and a systems support segment.
Northrop Grumman is offering a design based on its X-47B demonstrator UCAS which had successfully completed autonomous landing and takeoffs from US Navy aircraft carriers.
Lockheed Martin is offering the Sea Ghost air vehicle concept which will integrate proven technologies from F-35C fighter, RQ-170 Sentinel stealth UAV.
Boeing is offering a design based on its Phantom Ray UAV.
General Atomics is offering the Sea Avenger, a naval version of their original land-based Avenger UAV.
