High-Flying, Secret Drone Unveiled

High-Flying, Secret Drone Unveiled

DefenseTech

Lockheed Martin has pulled the lid off of a secret, stealthy, high-flying drone. Built and flown by its famous "Skunk Works" division, the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) could serve as a model for a new generation of robotic aircraft that hits targets halfway around the world.

With a 90-foot wingspan and a tailless design, the "Polecat" UAV looks like a smaller version of the B-2 stealth bomber. And like the B-2, the drone has been built to be stealthy and sneaky. But the twin-engine Polecat is "90 percent composite materials, rather than metal," the L.A. Daily News notes. "The vehicle is also made from less than 200 parts," adds Aviation Week. "Adhesives are used rather than rivets, decreasing the amount of labor needed to construct it -- that approach also contributed to a lower radar cross section inherent in the design."

The Polecat has taken two subsonic flights, around 15,000 ft. But, eventually, the idea is to fly it 60,000 and higher -- and break the sound barrier. Up there, contrails don't form, Jane's observes, so the plane can stay hidden even better. Plus, Lockheed wants to see how its composites hold up at high altitudes.

Skunk Works is also trying to rig Polecat up with "a fully autonomous flight control and mission-handling system that will allow future UAVs to conduct their missions, from take-off to landing, without the intervention of human operators," Jane's adds.

Already hard at work on a number of shape-shifting planes, Lockheed is working on ways for the Polecat and future UAVs to alter their structure -- and change their roles mid-mission, Jane's continues. An "extended-wing long-loitering [recon] planform" could suddenly change into "a swept-wing attack configuration."

The addition of a tail, for example, that could morph from a horizontal into a vertical configuration - to allow a laminar-flow wing to fly and manoeuvre without undue risk in the thin air above 60,000 ft. A morphing tail might also be a desirable feature for a carrier-borne UAV.

The company built the plane with $27 million of its own money over an 18-month period. But with the Air Force already pouring money in to high-altitude drone development -- and looking to put a new, multi-billion dollar fleet of long-range bombers in the air by 2018, that could be money extremely well spent.