Boeing will develop an internally-financed program called Phantom Ray, an unmanned flying test bed for highly-developed air system technologies, that will use the prototype vehicle which Boeing initially developed for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)/US Air Force/US Navy Joint-Unmanned Combat Air System (J-UCAS) program.
This aircraft will carry out 10 flights within a period of approximately six months to back missions that may consist of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; suppression of enemy air defenses; electronic attack; hunter/killer; and autonomous aerial refueling.
The Boeing Phantom Works organization is utilizing quick-prototyping techniques that will ease the speed and nimbleness required to fulfill the flight schedule in 2010.
The Phantom Ray program is obviously aimed at demonstrating the US commitment to rapid prototyping and is an important part of Boeing’s efforts to become a leader in the unmanned aircraft business.
Phantom Ray will lift up where the UCAS program left off in 2006 by further demonstrating Boeing’s unmanned systems development capabilities in a fighter-sized, state-of-the-art aerospace system.
Boeing UCAS program started with the X-45A, which successfully flew 64 times from 2002 to 2005. Those flights consisted of a demonstration exercise with two X-45A aircraft that marked the first unmanned, autonomous multivehicle flight under the control of a single pilot. Boeing also designed a larger UCAS aircraft, the X-45C, that will function as the basis for the Phantom Ray demonstrator.
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