While China conducts, and celebrates, the first jet takeoffs and landings on its new aircraft carrier Liaoning, the U.S. Navy is aiming to do even better. In a parallel series of tests this week, the sailing branch has taken huge steps towards deploying the first carrier-based robotic warplane.
The biggest milestone will be the X-47B’s first at-sea takeoff, slated for sometime next year. In the meantime, the Navy and drone-builder Northrop Grumman are practicing steering the pilotless warplane around a carrier deck and launching it using a steam-powered catapult — standard equipment on all 10 of the Navy’s full-size flattops.
These are significant advances in their own right — and necessary to prepare the fleet for the first carrier takeoff.
On Monday sailors used a crane to lift one of the two X-47B prototypes aboard the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, while the 1,100-foot-long flattop was docked in Norfolk, Virginia. ”The moment the aircraft set down on Truman’s deck was the moment it officially met the fleet,” said Capt. Jaime Engdahl, the Navy’s X-47B program manager.
The batwing X-47B, which had its first flight in California in February, is performing a series of deckhandling tests aboard Truman. Operators use a handheld controller to steer the 62-foot-wide drone warplane around the vessel’s crowded flight deck, hoping to prove the robot can safely share the ship with F/A-18 fighters, E-2 radar planes, helicopters and other manned aircraft. “It’s the first time we’ve had real operators driving real UAVs around,” Engdahl tells Danger Room.
Truman is the first carrier to host an X-47B. Northrop and the Navy have developed a suite of operator consoles, radio links and software — the latter totaling 3.5 million lines of code — that can be installed on any of the Nimitz-class carriers. All the Navy’s east coast carriers have gotten some or all of the modifications. The west coast and Pacific carriers could be next.
The X-47B could hop onto ships other than Truman to continue its development. Northrop and the Navy “will be ready for whatever carrier decks are going to be available to us next year,” says Don Blottenberger, the sailing branch’s deputy program manager for the X-47B.