J-UCAS Program Transitioning to the Services

Released on Wednesday, October 26, 2005

The Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems (J-UCAS) program, managed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) since October 2003, will be transitioning to Service leadership by November 1, 2005. The new joint U.S. Air Force/Navy office will be headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, and will continue to be supported by personnel at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, and other Navy facilities.

The objective of the J-UCAS program is to develop, demonstrate and transition an affordable, lethal, survivable, and supportable unmanned combat air system to meet the operational needs of the Air Force and Navy. DARPA has been working with two air vehicle prime contractors, The Boeing Company and Northrop Grumman Corporation, to design, build and demonstrate full-scale, flight-worthy air vehicles and mission control elements.

A unique attribute of this program is the coordinated development of a Common Operating System (COS) that will provide the mission functionality for the unmanned combat air vehicles within the system. The COS is being developed by the two vehicle prime contractors in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory serving as the integrator/broker. This consortium-like business arrangement also permits other technology contributors to provide advanced software applications and "best of breed" algorithms.

In addition to providing unique mission capabilities for operation in the most dangerous denied and highly defended environments, the program provides opportunities for addressing key issues that will affect the larger defense landscape. J-UCAS' system-level approach provides a substantial and practical option for implementing network centric operations.

The program will be transitioned in its current form, with the same milestones that have been outlined and with the same technical staff. The only major change will be to the program's upper management and the location of its headquarters.

Since the office was established at DARPA, the J-UCAS team has sustained an aggressive schedule, demonstrating significant advances that will shape aviation history:

i) Demonstration of multi-vehicle unmanned combat air vehicle operations, employing two demonstrator air vehicles under the control of a single operator.

ii) Autonomous single-vehicle and multi-vehicle response to simulated "pop-up" threats, engaging those threats with operator consent, simulating weapons release and battle damage assessment against the targets.

iii) Successful GPS-guided weapon deployment from an unmanned combat air vehicle.

iv) Demonstration of key mission control functionality needed for future aircraft carrier operations.

v) Accelerated development to two new J-UCAS low-observable air vehicle designs, the X-45C and the X-47B.

Assembly of the first two X-45C vehicles is currently underway in St. Louis, Mo., and the program is on schedule for first flight in Spring 2007. The X-47 program has begun initial carrier integration testing and will be conducting the critical design review of its air vehicles in May 2006.

The middleware for the first build of the COS software has been delivered to the Government and initial demonstrations are scheduled for December 2005. The revolutionary air vehicles, combined with the functionality provided by the J-UCAS COS, will allow for a robust Operational Assessment to begin in Spring 2007.