via USNI News.
The U.S Navy’s unmanned carrier launched airborne surveillance and strike (UCLASS) program has evolved to call for a jet that is much larger and much more capable than what was envisioned just six months ago, Navy officials told USNI News.Read the whole thing here.
“We’re talking about a 70,000- to 80,000-pound airplane,” Rear Adm. Mike Manazir, the Navy’s director of air warfare said in a 20 December interview. “We’re talking [Grumman F-14] Tomcat size.”
The shift in the character of UCLASS comes as the service prepares to release a set of months-delayed draft requirements to industry, and follows a struggle inside the Pentagon over the character of the aircraft.
“The concepts have moved around. They’ve been: You want unmanned off the carrier to do some off-cycle ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance]—we’re more than that now,” Manazir said. “We have heavy-end ISR and strike capability with some growth in the ability to carry weapons and some growth in the sensor package.”
Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and General Atomics are all hoping to secure what looks to one of the Defense Departments few new start development programs for the foreseeable future.
The Navy’s current thinking about the UCLASS concept calls for an aircraft much larger than even the 44,000-lb. Northrop Grumman X-47B unmanned combat air system-demonstrator (UCAS-D).
In fact, the UCLASS could be considerably larger than even the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, with some of the proposed UCLASS designs being 68 ft. long—eight feet longer than a Super Hornet, Manazir said.
Have no doubts though. The USN is taking a far different road to protecting our nation than the other services. THIS IS A BIG NAVY UAV!!! It will be as big as the F-14, fully loaded F-35, and as big as the A-5 Vigilante.
Once the military community, Congress and others finally dial in to the gutting thats about to occur in US forces this myopic, "gotta have the F-35 at all costs" stupidity will end.
But even more importantly the Brits will want some. So will others. Cuts are coming and as predicted the F-35 death spiral is all but assured.
Merry Christmas to me!
UPDATE and CLARIFICATION:
Let me clear up something when I say the back up plan is in full effect. My thinking goes like this. Take the proposed upgrades to the Super Hornet, conformal fuel tanks to increase range, signature reduction efforts, improvements to the AIM-120...mix them with a large UAV capable of conducting both deep recon and strike missions and what do you get? You get a Super Hornet that will be extremely capable until 2030 and probably a few years beyond. You get a UAV that can go deep on the first day of war and provide not only strike but recon and damage assessment. The question then becomes simple. What do you need the F-35 to do? How can you justify the added expense? In my view you can't. You're getting a cheap airplane that can do most of the work and then a cheap but capable extremely capable UAV to go where you wouldn't want to send a pilot anyway. Its the Navy for a win...unless the Air Force and Marine Corps gets in the way.
