UCAV (J-UCAS/UCLASS)

摘要

In the mid-1990s, the US armed forces began to examine the concept of UCAVs (uninhabited combat air vehicles). Unlike current UAVs that are intended primarily for reconnaissance missions, UCAVs are a combat UAV that could be employed on strike missions. UCAV programs were initially developed under separate US Air Force and US Navy programs but in June 2003, DoD decided to merge both programs into a common effort referred to as J-UCAS (Joint Uninhabited Combat Air Systems). In 2004, DoD decided to shift management responsibility for the J-UCAS effort back to the Air Force to occur in FY06 (October 2005). Two systems were being developed, the Boeing X-45C and the Northrop Grumman X-47B Pegasus which shared a Common Operating System. The J-UCAS program was expected to reach the Operational Assessment phase in FY07 through FY10 at which point the services would decide whether to proceed engineering development, or terminate the program. Instead, in December 2005, DoD ordered the program split in two with the Air Force shifting its attention to a classified program, and the Navy responsible for the remnants of the UCAV program, now limited to a carrier demonstration effort called UCAS-D with the contract going to Northrop Grumman in August 2007. The Navy began test flights of two X-47B prototypes in 2011 and conducted a series of carrier catapult launches and arrested landings in May-July 2013.