US Navy’s UCLASS / CBARS / MQ-XX / MQ-25 Stingray Program

Is the funding they have requested enough to keep the X-47B flying?

They might as well get as much data out of the program as they can in the meantime.
 
This funding is for the UCLASS program. The X-47 (funded through the UCAS-D) vehicles would be retired at the end of September.
 
A good reminder of the UCLASS proposals to the United States Navy:

"Navy Carrier drone selection in 2015 and first flight 2018"
Feb 04, 2015

Source:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/02/navy-carrier-drone-selection-in-2015.html?m=1

The United States Navy's Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) program is to develop an aircraft carrier-based unmanned aerial vehicle to provide an unmanned intelligence and strike asset to the fleet. The UCLASS will be "an autonomous aircraft capable of precision strike in a contested environment, and it is expected to grow and expand its missions so that it is capable of extended range intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, electronic warfare, tanking, and maritime domain awareness. After the selection in 2015, a prototype Uclass drone should be flying in 2018 and should be deployed about 2022-2023. The program is funded in the most recent 2016 Pentagon budget proposal.

One of four designs will be selected in 2015:

1. Northrop Grumman is offering a design based off their X-47B demonstrator

Grumman X-47B

2. Lockheed Martin is offering the Lockheed Sea Ghost

Lockheed Seaghost


3. Boeing is offering a design that may be based off the Phantom Ray


Boeing Phantom Works has studied a UCLASS design featuring moderate stealth capabilities and long endurance.

4. General Atomics is offering the Sea Avenger, a naval version of their original land-based Avenger.
Click to expand...
 
Northrop Halts, Lockheed Slows Uclass As U.S. Navy Punts Again

Uclass could have been stunted due to advances by the Air Force and CIA in developing its stealthy RQ-180 unmanned reconnaissance system, which is thought to be entering operations this year. Details have not been released by the Pentagon, but the Air Force acknowledged its existence in December 2013 in response to an Aviation Week query. The RQ-180 is being developed as a stealthy, penetrating intelligence collector that would assume the role once held by the SR-71 in being able to surveil well-defended targets around the globe.

Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Virginia), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said during a Feb. 3 Defense Writers Group breakfast in Washington that the discussion about Uclass was mired in classified restrictions. "I wish I could be more specific with you on the Uclass," he said. "I am pretty comfortable at this particular point in time, although most of the conversations are on a classified level. But I’m pretty comfortable with the direction … I’m not trying to be vague. I just don’t want to go to jail."
Click to expand...

Aviation Week Aerospace Daily & Defense Report Feb 04, 2015
 
bring_it_on said:
This funding is for the UCLASS program. The X-47 (funded through the UCAS-D) vehicles would be retired at the end of September.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that clarification.
 
bring_it_on said:
Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Virginia), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said during a Feb. 3 Defense Writers Group breakfast in Washington that the discussion about Uclass was mired in classified restrictions. "I wish I could be more specific with you on the Uclass," he said. "I am pretty comfortable at this particular point in time, although most of the conversations are on a classified level. But I’m pretty comfortable with the direction … I’m not trying to be vague. I just don’t want to go to jail."
Click to expand...

Aviation Week Aerospace Daily & Defense Report Feb 04, 2015



Previous DoD statements/releases about UCLASS shed light on what this about.
Persons briefed on the current direction of UCLASS are not allowed to discuss the movie "Swordfish".
 
http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/navy-delays-fielding-uclass-to-2023-408650/?cmpid=NLC|FGFG|FGUAV-2015-0216-GLOBnews&sfid=70120000000taAj
 
bobbymike said:
http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/navy-delays-fielding-uclass-to-2023-408650/?cmpid=NLC|FGFG|FGUAV-2015-0216-GLOBnews&sfid=70120000000taAj
Click to expand...

Looks like UCLASS is dead, baring a miracle.
 
And this folks is why modern weapons take so damn long from initial design to in service.
 
Grey Havoc said:
bobbymike said:
http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/navy-delays-fielding-uclass-to-2023-408650/?cmpid=NLC|FGFG|FGUAV-2015-0216-GLOBnews&sfid=70120000000taAj
Click to expand...

Looks like UCLASS is dead, baring a miracle.
Click to expand...

Rather early to pronounce that, these sort of projects have a tendency to slip.
 
http://aviationweek.com/defense/opinion-looking-answers-navy-s-uclass-mystery?NL=AW-19&Issue=AW-19_20150226_AW-19_762&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_6&YM_RID=CPEN1000000230026&YM_MID=1825

UCLASS now a 'black program'
 
Perhaps they are going to use a variant of the RQ-180 after all that appears to have been developed from a program that was originally a joint airforce navy project.

Either way it sounds like the preeminence of stealth in the design has won out.
 
Flyaway said:
Perhaps they are going to use a variant of the RQ-180 after all that appears to have been developed from a program that was originally a joint airforce navy project.

Either way it sounds like the preeminence of stealth in the design has won out.
Click to expand...

Doubtful. It's more likely that attempting to take the program black is the last card left to play in trying to save the program.
 
Grey Havoc said:
Flyaway said:
Perhaps they are going to use a variant of the RQ-180 after all that appears to have been developed from a program that was originally a joint airforce navy project.

Either way it sounds like the preeminence of stealth in the design has won out.
Click to expand...

Doubtful. It's more likely that attempting to take the program black is the last card left to play in trying to save the program.
Click to expand...

Do they think they'll be less political interference if its in the black or more the case less public scrutiny?
 
Flyaway said:
Do they think they'll be less political interference if its in the black or more the case less public scrutiny?
Click to expand...

Trying to avoid political interference (and not just from outside the Navy) would definitely be a major consideration.
 
bobbymike said:
http://aviationweek.com/defense/opinion-looking-answers-navy-s-uclass-mystery?NL=AW-19&Issue=AW-19_20150226_AW-19_762&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_6&YM_RID=CPEN1000000230026&YM_MID=1825

UCLASS now a 'black program'
Click to expand...

Hahaha! I just had that debate with LowObservable not two weeks ago on why the Air Force classified everything LRS-B and now the Navy has followed in their footsteps. I guess he has seen the light....
 
Grey Havoc said:
Flyaway said:
Do they think they'll be less political interference if its in the black or more the case less public scrutiny?
Click to expand...

Trying to avoid political interference (and not just from outside the Navy) would definitely be a major consideration.
Click to expand...

The problem is you're really only defering the issue as you might well keep political interference out of things during the development phase but at some point it will still have to face wider political involvement when it comes to trying to obtain funding for actual full scale production just as the LRS-B is about too.
 
There's nothing in there about "taking UCLASS black". The reverse is equally likely.
 
LowObservable said:
There's nothing in there about "taking UCLASS black". The reverse is equally likely.
Click to expand...

Here's how the link to the article read in the AW&ST email I received;

"The story of the Navy’s stealth unmanned air vehicle has taken some new turns. Is a secret project behind the changes?"

Plus from the article:

"U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), a member of the cabal that has been pushing for a high-end Uclass, was discreet in an early-February discussion. “I’m pretty comfortable with the direction that the program is taking,” he said. “I’m not trying to be vague. I just don’t want to go to jail.”

"P-AEA appears in no known plan, but you need not dig very deep into the Air Force’s fiscal 2016 budget to find $7 billion in classified acquisition money that is neither part of the cash that the Pentagon launders for the intelligence community, nor the LRSB."

"What follows is a speculative scenario, an exercise in the risky art of connect-the-dots:

A classified P-AEA program started in 2011-12. It may have involved flight demonstrations. Quite recently, Boeing won it, hence McNerney’s confidence about St Louis’s future. It’s been designated RAQ-25, indicating it has a strike capability, and as well as pathfinding for the LRSB, it takes on the MQ-X role. RAQ-25 is somewhere in that $7 billion slush fund.

Work’s comments about “capabilities that we already have” indicate he and other leaders are pushing for a joint Air Force/Navy program based on the RAQ-25. The delay in Uclass allows time for a carrier variant to be demonstrated, and competitors have deemed the battle half over."

------------------------------------------------------------
I apologize if I inferred incorrectly that UCLASS will have a new black mission as P-AEA or are you saying we will have UCLASS and there is a whole other program for a secret P-AEA? Or is UCLASS a new classified RAQ-25?
 
The full article:

http://aviationweek.com/defense/opinion-looking-answers-navy-s-uclass-mystery
 
bring_it_on said:
The full article:

http://aviationweek.com/defense/opinion-looking-answers-navy-s-uclass-mystery
Click to expand...

Full article already posted up the thread
 
bobbymike said:
LowObservable said:
There's nothing in there about "taking UCLASS black". The reverse is equally likely.
Click to expand...

Here's how the link to the article read in the AW&ST email I received;

"The story of the Navy’s stealth unmanned air vehicle has taken some new turns. Is a secret project behind the changes?"

Plus from the article:

"U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), a member of the cabal that has been pushing for a high-end Uclass, was discreet in an early-February discussion. “I’m pretty comfortable with the direction that the program is taking,” he said. “I’m not trying to be vague. I just don’t want to go to jail.”
Click to expand...

It would take all of the money in that so-called $7 billion slush fund to come up with a definition of "cabal" that factually reflects
Chairman Forbes & Co.'s advocacy for UCLASS.
 
Grey Havoc said:
Doubtful. It's more likely that attempting to take the program black is the last card left to play in trying to save the program.
Click to expand...
Im afraid I can't agree with your theory; such a move would be a possible gambit if UCLASS were facing the knife but that hasn't been the program's problem. The UCLASS problems were mostly about disagreement over what the aircraft's capabilities should be, there really hasn't been any pressure to just kill it. And if they were trying to "hide" it in the Black program, Forbes wouldn't be talking about it in the positive manner he is. I may not be his biggest fan, but he's not dim.
 
Hasn't that quote been taken somewhat out of context as wasn't he just talking about negotiations over the RPFs being classified rather than the program as a whole.
 
McCain Weighs in on UCLASS Debate, Current Navy Requirements ‘Strategically Misguided’
By: Sam LaGrone
March 24, 2015 7:04 PM

Source:
http://news.usni.org/2015/03/24/mccain-weighs-in-on-uclass-debate-current-navy-requirements-strategically-misguided


The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) is calling on the Department of Defense and the Navy to develop a stealthy and lethal unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for the Navy’s Unmanned Carrier Launched Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) aircraft, according to a Tuesday letter to Secretary of Defense Ash Carter obtained by USNI News.

In his letter to Carter, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) encouraged the Navy and the Pentagon to craft an aircraft that features broadband stealth, an internal weapons payload of 4,000 pounds and a days long refueled mission endurance — capabilities that don’t align to the Navy’s last reported list of requirements.

“I am concerned that the current requirements proposed for the UCLASS program place a disproportionate emphasis on unrefueled endurance to enable sustained ISR support for the carrier strike group, which would result in an aircraft design with serious deficiencies in both long-term survivability and its internal weapons payload capacity,” read the letter.
“Developing a new carrier-based unmanned aircraft that is primarily an ISR platform and unable to operate effectively in medium- to high –level threat environments would be operationally and strategically misguided.”

Most recently, the Navy has said it wants a UCLASS that would serve primarily as information, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) asset that carrier strike group (CSG) would use between periods of manned flights able to fly unrefueled for up to 4,000 nautical miles and posses the ability to strike uncontested targets.

In addition to his stance on the requirements of UCLASS, McCain called for the Navy to conduct additional testing with the two Northrop Grumman X-47B Unmanned Combat Air Systems Demonstration (UCAS-D) aircraft.

McCain’s position reflects the vision of a carrier UAV with the equivalent payload of a Lockheed Martin F-35C Lighting II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) that was first expressed as part of the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review.

Largely silent on the issue last year, McCain’s entrance into the UCLASS debate follows frequent and pointed questions from House Armed Services Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee chairman Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) on the Navy’s direction of the program.

Last year, restrictions on funding for the UCLASS program and an internal Pentagon review of the joint portfolio of ISR UAVs placed a pause on the request for proposal (RfP) for the air segment of the system until Fiscal Year (FY) 2016, officials said during the release of the FY 2016 budget.

Defense officials reached Tuesday by USNI News said the internal Pentagon ISR review — started by Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work last year — is still ongoing.

McCain’s letter also follows closely the release of the latest Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard strategy revision emphasizing an “All Domain Access” capability to counter emerging anti-access area denial (A2/AD) threats around the world.

In February, Work said UCLASS would need to fit into the larger portfolio of U.S. military unmanned systems.

“We decided this year we were almost ready to launch the RFP but we decided to take a pause because we want to consider the UCLASS as part of the joint family of unmanned surveillance and strike systems and make sure that we’re going after the right capabilities,” Work said during the WEST 2015 conference in San Diego, Calif.

“In addition to looking at capabilities that we already have and using them differently, we’re going to make sure in this environment, that when we go after a new platform, it’s the platform that we need from a joint perspective.”

The Navy, however, is still working on the ground segment and other components of UCLASS — believed to be called RAQ-25 by the service — pending the results of the ongoing review and the start of a competition of the air segment of the program, Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) officials told USNI News last week.

Four companies —Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Atomics and Northrop Grumman— have received preliminary contracts from NAVAIR to develop concepts for UCLASS ahead of the FY 2016 RfP.

As a result of the pause, the service has pushed UCLASS initial fielding from 2020 to 2022 or 2023.
Click to expand...
 
It would be interesting to have an 'almost' strategic ranged aircraft (albeit with a fairly small payload when compared with a strategic bomber) fly off a carrier deck. There is obviously a lot of worry, IMO, about China's A2AD weapon systems like the so-called carrier killer IRBMs and the need to keep the carrier as far away from, hence more open ocean, the coast of a certain Asian country.
 
bobbymike said:
It would be interesting to have an 'almost' strategic ranged aircraft (albeit with a fairly small payload when compared with a strategic bomber) fly off a carrier deck. There is obviously a lot of worry, IMO, about China's A2AD weapon systems like the so-called carrier killer IRBMs and the need to keep the carrier as far away from, hence more open ocean, the coast of a certain Asian country.
Click to expand...

Will be easier/cheaper for:
1) China to evolve IRBMs of increased range
OR
2) US to develop a carrier based UAV "that features broadband stealth, an internal weapons payload of 4,000 pounds and a days long refueled mission endurance"?

(Of course, obtaining precise targeting data for the missiles may require China to develop platforms that even up the cost/difficulty equation).
 
Mat Parry said:
bobbymike said:
It would be interesting to have an 'almost' strategic ranged aircraft (albeit with a fairly small payload when compared with a strategic bomber) fly off a carrier deck. There is obviously a lot of worry, IMO, about China's A2AD weapon systems like the so-called carrier killer IRBMs and the need to keep the carrier as far away from, hence more open ocean, the coast of a certain Asian country.
Click to expand...

Will be easier/cheaper for:
1) China to evolve IRBMs of increased range
OR
2) US to develop a carrier based UAV "that features broadband stealth, an internal weapons payload of 4,000 pounds and a days long refueled mission endurance"?

(Of course, obtaining precise targeting data for the missiles may require China to develop platforms that even up the cost/difficulty equation).
Click to expand...

Missed one other potential cost:

3) be forced closer and closer to those missiles and increase the chances of losing a $12 billion carrier or I guess around $15 billion with the potential loss of the air wing as well.

I would much prefer the US develop a ship that carries IRBM of even longer range and bombard key defense sites but there does not seem to be any plans for that.
 
http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/commentary/2015/03/31/carrier-uclass-navy-air-wing-penetrate-denial-refuel-x47b-ucasd/70663440/
 
Debate over UCLASS capabilities increases programme risk, auditors warn.

http://www.janes.com/article/51133/debate-over-uclass-capabilities-increases-programme-risk-auditors-warn
 
"Document: GAO Report on Navy UCLASS Requirements"
Source:
http://news.usni.org/2015/05/04/document-gao-report-on-navy-uclass-requirements

Document: GAO Report on Navy UCLASS Requirements
May 4, 2015 12:31 PM • Updated: May 5, 2015 7:34 AM

The following is Government Accountability Office report, Unmanned Carrier-Based Aircraft System: Navy Needs to Demonstrate Match between Its Requirements and Available Resources. The report was released on May 4, 2015.
Click to expand...
 
X-47B
 

Attachments

  • Omega Boeing K-707 N707MQ X-47B by Northrup Grumman call sign Salty Dog 502 FA-18 VX-23.jpg
    Omega Boeing K-707 N707MQ X-47B by Northrup Grumman call sign Salty Dog 502 FA-18 VX-23.jpg
    368.1 KB · Views: 600
Boeing ‘Very Disappointed’ With Pentagon’s Uclass Delay.

http://m.aviationweek.com/defense/boeing-very-disappointed-pentagon-s-uclass-delay

Mabus: UCLASS Will Act As Bridge To Autonomous Strike Fighter

The Navy envisions the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Surveillance and Strike system as a bridge to its autonomous strike fighter, according to service Secretary Ray Mabus.
 
“If the industry is to continue investing in these opportunities, the Defense Department has to solidify its requirements. It does nobody any good to do R&D for the sake of R&D.”


That must of hurt big time to.go.all out for the stealth ride and have it swept Into a Naval Reaper type...
 
Ian33 said:
“If the industry is to continue investing in these opportunities, the Defense Department has to solidify its requirements. It does nobody any good to do R&D for the sake of R&D.”


That must of hurt big time to.go.all out for the stealth ride and have it swept Into a Naval Reaper type...
Click to expand...

Yep. You won't see China make that mistake.
 
China isn't anywhere near fielding a stealth strike fighter as the US, so obviously it would have more political room to field a high end stealth ucav.


PS. Anyone knows anything about the recent rumors of China developing a naval large stealthy uav to help locate the US carriers for their missiles?
 
I don't think so. I saw an article of wind tunnel testing of a large uav with joint bodies design. It looks like 2 flying wings attached together. One in the back, and the smaller one in the front.
 

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