First Flight

The Navy's much-delayed, Northrop Grumman-built X-47B unmanned combat air system demonstrator (UCAS-D) will undergo its first flight test this afternoon, a service official announced this morning.

Rear Adm. Matt Klunder, director of the Navy's Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Capabilities Division, told attendees of an unmanned systems conference in Washington that the UCAS-D would fly at 5 p.m. local time today out of Edwards Air Force Base, CA.

The UCAS' previous December flight test was pushed back due to bad weather and program officials' desire to take a closer look at the vehicle's braking system, according to Klunder.

The most recent delay has not been the first, as Inside the Navy reported last August:

Last November, Naval Air Systems Command announced that first flight would be delayed until early 2010. Capt. Jeffrey Penfield, UCAS program manager, said in an Aug. 2 interview that a review of the program was conducted in the spring and "we came out with a new schedule in late April to early May."

The new schedule calls for flight tests to begin in December, which would push back at-sea trials on an aircraft carrier from 2012 to the summer of 2013, he said.

"I think it's safe to say that when you put it on contract in August of 2007 and we're going to fly in November of 2009, that's a pretty aggressive schedule," he said. "I don't think we understood how complex that was going to be. So we know a lot more. This is a demonstration; this is all about learning and learning lessons that we can apply to future acquisition programs.

"I believe now we have a schedule that is much more executable for getting us out to 2013," he added.

The $1.5 billion program, started in 2007, is a six-year effort aimed at demonstrating that an unmanned aircraft about the size of an F/A-18 Hornet can be integrated on a carrier flight deck and can be refueled in the air, Penfield said.