Hi boys:
usually is not easy task to find manufacturer's designations of missiles and drones. During last summer I went tru some info (and naturally I forgot of taking note of the source) about Boeing X-45 program.
The following are the relevant parts (I apologize for ignoring the name of the autor) with some consideration of mine.
The Boeing Joint Unmanned Combat Air System (J-UCAS) X-45 was the first highly autonomous, unmanned system specifically designed for combat operations in the network-centric environment of the 21st century.
Boeing began its unmanned combat aircraft program in 1998, and the following year, Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Air Force chose Boeing to build two X-45A air vehicles and a mission control station under the J-UCAS Advanced Technology Demonstration program. During its first flight, May 22, 2002, the X-45A, nicknamed the “Elsie May,” (name new to me) flew for 14 minutes at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
On April 29, 2003, Boeing announced that DARPA had asked it to modify its X-245B design then in development — a larger, more capable version of the X-145A.
(X-145A is a typo for X-45A or the manufacturer's des of it?)
DARPA wanted the design to evolve into a version that could meet the objectives of both the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy. Boeing asked that the modified concept be called the X-45C. (But according to Wiki, X-45C is the same as X-45B: X-245B also?).
The Boeing design for the larger X-45C, went on to serve as the basis for the internally funded Phantom Ray Demonstrator, a liquid hydrogen-powered unmanned aircraft system .
In fact, I remember that there was also an X-46A that was more or less the same UCAV for USAF, the relabelled X-45N (N for Navy).
Some of you, perhaps, could enlighten all the matter in better way...
Nico
usually is not easy task to find manufacturer's designations of missiles and drones. During last summer I went tru some info (and naturally I forgot of taking note of the source) about Boeing X-45 program.
The following are the relevant parts (I apologize for ignoring the name of the autor) with some consideration of mine.
The Boeing Joint Unmanned Combat Air System (J-UCAS) X-45 was the first highly autonomous, unmanned system specifically designed for combat operations in the network-centric environment of the 21st century.
Boeing began its unmanned combat aircraft program in 1998, and the following year, Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Air Force chose Boeing to build two X-45A air vehicles and a mission control station under the J-UCAS Advanced Technology Demonstration program. During its first flight, May 22, 2002, the X-45A, nicknamed the “Elsie May,” (name new to me) flew for 14 minutes at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
On April 29, 2003, Boeing announced that DARPA had asked it to modify its X-245B design then in development — a larger, more capable version of the X-145A.
(X-145A is a typo for X-45A or the manufacturer's des of it?)
DARPA wanted the design to evolve into a version that could meet the objectives of both the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy. Boeing asked that the modified concept be called the X-45C. (But according to Wiki, X-45C is the same as X-45B: X-245B also?).
The Boeing design for the larger X-45C, went on to serve as the basis for the internally funded Phantom Ray Demonstrator, a liquid hydrogen-powered unmanned aircraft system .
In fact, I remember that there was also an X-46A that was more or less the same UCAV for USAF, the relabelled X-45N (N for Navy).
Some of you, perhaps, could enlighten all the matter in better way...
Nico
