Take alook at the bottom part of this article. It says that The X-45 was designed by Boeing to fly independently, with a single person supervising up to four of the planes.
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Posted on Fri, May. 24, 2002
First flight of X-45 robot combat plane called success
LOS ANGELES (AP) - U.S. military officials announced that a prototype of the first robotic plane designed specifically for combat missions has made a successful maiden flight.
The Boeing Co.'s X-45 flew for 14 minutes, completing a wide oval above Edwards Air Force Base in the California desert before landing on a dry lake bed, officials said Thursday.
``We believe it will transform the way we fight wars in the future,'' said David Lanman, who is responsible for unmanned aircraft development the Air Force Research Laboratory.
The military sees such aircraft taking part in its most dangerous missions, keeping human pilots out of harm's way, usually in initial attacks to suppress enemy air defenses.
During the Wednesday morning flight, the sleek, tailless jet roared from the runway and flew to 7,500 feet, reaching a top speed of 224 mph. The plane flew autonomously on a programmed course, with a ground-based controller commanding it only to change its airspeed.
``It looked awful damn nice,'' said Air Force Col. Michael Leahy, unmanned combat air vehicle program manager for the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Boeing's Phantom Works in St. Louis built the plane for DARPA and the Air Force.
The Air Force plans to fly the drone every two to three weeks through the summer. A second plane will begin test flights later this year.
The Y-shaped plane has a 34-foot wingspan and weighs 8,000 pounds. It is the first drone designed specifically to carry weapons into combat, a role the Air Force sees the eventual larger production versions being capable of by 2008. Other robotic planes, including a spy drone called the Predator currently being used in Afghanistan, have been modified to carry weapons.
Glenn Buchan, a senior defense analyst with the Rand Corp., said that robotic planes have not flown long enough to assess their performance. The Predator, he said, was hustled into combat while still under development.
``It looks like these things have a lot of promise and we are relatively bullish on them for a lot of applications, but there are a lot of bugs with them, as there are with all vehicles, and the way you work them out is by flying them,'' Buchan said.
Leahy said the X-45 would ``hunt in packs,'' carrying up to 3,000 pounds of guided bombs to drop on enemy radar and surface-to-air missile batteries.
Boeing hopes to build hundreds of the planes, which would cost $10 million to $15 million each.
The X-45 was designed by Boeing to fly independently, with a single person supervising up to four of the planes. Officials hope to fly a swarm of the planes by late 2003 for the first time.
The plane will have a 750-mile range and fly at subsonic speeds. The Air Force would like to store the planes for up to 20 years and then ship them, at short notice, to any war zone where they would be needed.
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