“Rapid Eye” New Ballistic UAV
Pictured: NASA Helios UAV.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is looking at a novel, but perhaps politically difficult idea, to launch an unmanned aerial vehicle from a ballistic missile. The advantage? You could deliver the UAV anywhere in the world within 60 minutes.
“The Rapid Eye program is an exploratory development program with the overall goal of developing and demonstrating the ability to deliver a persistent ISR capability anywhere on the globe within one hour and remain on-station until relieved or the mission is completed,” DARPA said in a notice issued today for an industry day to discuss the idea. “It is envisioned that this program will, at a minimum, develop and demonstrate all the technologies necessary for the rocket delivery of a High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) UAV.”
The program, if it goes forward, will foocus on a number of technical challenges:
(i) rocket deliver a HALE UAV on a ballistic track to the approximate area of interest
(ii) decelerate the launch package from reentry speeds to the UAV deployment speed,
(iii) deploy the UAV and start its propulsion system, and
(iv) provide persistent ISR on-station at high altitudes for a minimum of seven hours.
The air vehicle ISR payload is nominally 500 lbs with a 5kW power requirement. It is envisioned that this proposed system will utilize a current inventory launch vehicle or one planned to be in the inventory by the end of 2009.
Not that this isn’t an interesting idea from a technological standpoint, but in practice, if the plan were to launch from the continental United States (submarine launch would be the other option), it would presumably suffer from the same issue that has plagued the Air Force’s continuing attempts to arm ICBMs with conventional warheads: it’s hard to convince other countries (like Russia), that it’s not a nuke.
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Im loving all of this new technology coming out recently. And im definitely glad im on the right side of this technology, feel sorry for everyone else though
October 31st, 2007 at 1:03 pmThe technology is great, the cost is not. We are again spending money on this while our troops don’t have dragon armor or HK 416’s. Being on the forefront of every piece of technology is exensive, and it makes the technology that much easier for others to emulate at a much cheaper price.
UAV’s are great and help us in Iraq and Afghanistan. UAV’s popping out of a cruise missle are really cool and not applicable to the fights we are already in. Lets win this war first.
October 31st, 2007 at 2:42 pmBe careful what you ask for. Didn’t Dragon Armor turn out to be a scam?
November 1st, 2007 at 1:09 am