Unmanned Carrier Aviation News

The Navy's X-47B unmanned aircraft has completed its final test aboard 'USS Theodore Roosevelt' (CVN 71) and has returned to its home base at Naval Air Station Patuxent River after eight days at sea
, informs U.S. Naval Air Systems Command. While underway, the X-47B flew in the carrier pattern with manned aircraft for the first time and conducted a total of five catapult launches, four arrestments and nine touch-and-go landings, including a night time shipboard flight deck handling evaluation. "This is another detachment for the record books; all tests were safely and effectively executed," said Capt. Beau Duarte, Navy's Unmanned Carrier Aviation program manager. Testing began Aug. 17 when the X-47B performed its initial cooperative launch and recovery cycle with an F/A-18.

An un-manned X-47B has completed a series of tests, operating safely and seamlessly with manned aircraft from 'USS Theodore Roosevelt' informs the US Navy. Building on lessons learned from its first test period aboard TR in November 2013, the X-47B team is now focused on perfecting deck operations and performing maneuvers with manned aircraft in the flight pattern. "Today we showed that the X-47B could take off, land and fly in the carrier pattern with manned aircraft while maintaining normal flight deck operations," said Capt. Beau Duarte, program manager for the Navy's Unmanned Carrier Aviation office. The first series of manned/unmanned operations began when the ship launched an F/A-18 and an X-47B.

One year ago, Sailors watched an unmanned air vehicle take-off from a nuclear-powered carrier flight deck for the first time in naval aviation history, says Capt. "May 14, 2013 was an extraordinary day for the Navy. The crew from USS George H.W. Bush launched the X-47B that morning off the coast of Virginia. The tailless, autonomous unmanned aircraft took to the skies, while the flight crew on deck celebrated this historic achievement. Our Naval Air Forces Commander Vice Adm. David Buss called it “a watershed event” as he watched from the flight deck. He compared this event to aviation pioneer Eugene Ely’s first-ever landing on the deck of a ship in 1911. In July, the UCAS-D team went back to the ship and took testing one step further.

The first-ever launch of an unmanned aircraft from a modern aircraft carrier, the USS George H.W. Bush, was described by Rear Adm. Mat Winter 
Program Executive Officer for Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons, as – "An inflection point in history". "These are exciting times for the Navy as we are truly doing something that has never been done before – something I never imagined could be done during my 29-year naval career. This historic event challenges the paradigm of manned carrier landings that were first conducted more than 90 years ago.

Unmanned aircraft accomplishes first ever ‘touch-and -go’ aboard aircraft carrier CVN 77. The Navy's X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstrator (UCAS-D) has begun touch-and-go landing operations aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush following on board launching. For UCAS-D, this represents the most significant technology maturation of the program. Ship relative navigation and precision touchdown of the X-47B are critical technology elements for all future Unmanned Carrier Aviation (UCA) aircraft.

An X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) demonstrator aircraft recently taxied on flight deck of 'USS Harry S. Truman'. During the test phase, UCAS deck operators used an arm-mounted control display unit (CDU) to remotely control the aircraft. Gerrit Everson, one of the operators who controlled the X-47B, said the UCAS demonstrator displayed excellent integration with Truman's flight deck. "With the CDU, we followed the aircraft director's signals to move the aircraft left or right, over the arresting wire, to and from the catapults and to various spotting positions," said Everson. Lt. Cmdr.