More than a year ago the Air Force unceremoniously dumped a promising program to build stealthy killer drones in partnership with the Navy. The sea service soldiered on with the so-called “Unmanned Combat Air System” program, aiming to launch killer drones from its aircraft carriers. Today the Pentagon announced that Northrop Grumman will build the prototypes at an initial cost of $640 million, with a due date of 2013. This is a big blow to Boeing, which had designed a lightweight drone, the X-45, that was more suitable to the Air Force. Northrop’s X-47 is tougher and reflects the firm’s experience building heavy F-14 fighters back in the ’80s.
Next up in the drones world: a contest to build 50 large maritime surveillance drones for the Navy. Northrop Grumman is offering its world-beating Global Hawk; General Atomics is pitching “Mariner” — a naval Predator, basically; and Boeing has proposed an, ahem, unmanned Gulfstream business jet. Word was that Boeing had stripped its drone programs of people and money in a bid to keep the X-45 alive after the Air Force bailed. Now Boeing’s drone shop is in shambles, with no X-45 and little hope of winning the maritime surveillance contract. The future is robots. And the robots are Northrop Grumman’s.
Related:
Boeing’s drone shop on life support
Navy doesn’t want to talk about surveillance drones
Marine want small killer drones
Related posts:
[...] The Pentagon dealt Boeing’s struggling robot shop a major blow on Wednesday when it awarded rival Northrop Grumman a $640-million contract to develop a stealthy armed flying drone, a.k.a. the Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstrator. But if a leaked document from the desk of program manager David Koopersmith is any indication, Boeing isn’t going down without a fight: [...]
[...] Related: Boeing to protest drone decision? Northrop tapped to build killer drone Bill Sweetman mulls drone decision Boeing’s drone shop on life support Navy doesn’t want to talk about surveillance drones No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI Leave a comment Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong> [...]
[...] Something strange happened in April when it came time to place bids for the Navy’s Unmanned Combat Air System-Demonstrator program. The Navy was expected to budget only $640 million for the seven-year effort to fly fighter-like drones off aircraft carriers. Northrop Grumman bid a plan costing almost exactly that amount; Boeing’s plan on the other hand, was priced at nearly twice as much: $1.2 billion. So it was no surprise when Northrop Grumman snagged the contract with its X-47 model, leaving the Boeing X-45 without a patron. Thereafter, the Navy reportedly ordered the existing X-45s destroyed. [...]
[...] Related: Global Hawk pics Northrop wins UCAS No swarming for UCAS Boeing to protest UCAS? Boeing still in the UCAS game — barely Tiny drones get wired No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI Leave a comment Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong> [...]