First stealth fighter to take off and land on a carrier
 

Extremely Cool and scary as hell at the same time.

Dale

Hey Joe,cool video

Did you notice the transmitter?

I think it was a Jedi :cool:

Unmanned stealth fighter I might add!! My cousin is on the Bush and he was part of the flight prep crew, very cool stuff!

Just unbelievably cool, though a touch creepy in a Skynet kinda way....

very cool. The next step will be to add guns and bombs. Proud to be an American!

Not the first time. ;)

Negative, they will add white flags and bibles. Lockheed won that contract.

I think it is a little premature to call the X-47B a stealth fighter. The UCAS project was more of a proof of concept of launching and recovering unmanned vehicles from the carrier. We have had 'coupled' approaches for years on the carriers, although it wasn't all that reliable in the Tomcat, so this isn't really earth-shaking. Will be a while before the UCAS transitions to having weapons loaded and is performing tactical missions.
Regards,
Gus

Here is the stealth and manned F-35 operating on a carrier in 2011 (and vertical landing).


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPlYoaTXZoc


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTIErucXWaI

The operation of the Stealth Attack Drone prototype is very cool and very impressive in any case.

Best Regards,
David

just think the Chinese have just floated their 1st aircraft carrier and also have some electric subs tht are hard er to detect than Nuc boats. There is something to be said for staying 2 steps ahead of your potential enemies. I don't most Americans don't really realize just how serious this "Non-conflicts' are. Right now we are fighting both an economic and cyber war and the Chinese have no doubts about what they have to do. These incidents with the Japanese are just there to test not only the Japanese response but ours also. We cant let our guard down. Semper Fi

Yeah,

I'm with Sideshow on this one. Cool as heck, but kinda scary and sobering, too. The thought of all of these weapons/defense systems going 'unmanned' is a bit unnerving to me because it feels like the fewer human beings involved, the less accountability there is. As far as what they're operational capabilities are, I've always gotten the impression that by the time the public gets its first view, the thing has likely been operational (if not obsolete) for years. :p

I agree with YellowAircraft. If we can see it it is almost declassified for all practical purposes. What you DON'T see is a generation or two ahead of that.

Why unnerving? Cruise missiles and missiles at large are "unmanned" also. In the past, always when the public got the first view things were operational and obsolete most likely, but that was then, this is now. It is a different world.

Gerry

Yeah, very cool video. Actually this isn't the first time an unmanned a/c took off and landed on a carrier. I was in the military back in the 80's and early 90's and was on the USS MIdway. Since a teen, I was always into r/c planes, still am today. So back then ('86 & '87) I used to talk about r/c stuff with guys on the ship. At the time there was a group of guys who used to spend their off time, while the boat was in port (Yokosuka, Japan), and mess with r/c cars and trucks in the hangar bay and on the roof (flight deck). It wasn't until '90 to '91 when a US carrier took on this little project where they took off and landed a small r/c plane. I can look and maybe find an article about it on the net if I'm lucky. I think it was at that time when the idea started to take shape. Twenty some odd years fast forward and technology has come where we can now fly these unmanned birds like what's shown in the video you posted. Great stuff to see and when I watch it, brings back those old memories of that group of guys playing with their r/c trucks and cars on the boat so many years ago. Also watching that video, I miss those six month I.O. cruises and being underway. I loved flight opps, FOD walkdowns first thing in the morning and that unforgettable yet wonderful smell of spent JP5 coming over the jet blast deflectors as the birds were being launched off the bow.

Exactly! +1

Not in this case, for this specific system. The X-47B is definitely a demonstrator aircraft, and will not be operational. the RFP for the actual operational aircraft (UCLASS) is soon to be, or maybe already has been, released. The operational aircraft will be significantly bigger than the X-47B, carry a lot more fuel, and actually be able to carry and launch weapons.

I talked to several people at NAVAIR who have worked on the X-47 and they said that one of the major goals was to identify and quantify the airframe stresses resulting on an autonomous aircraft of this type from carrier landings. Apparently, the X-47 was not built to take a major amount of carrier landings and they have proven to be more stressful than anticipated, so the test aircraft are very close to the end of their serviceable life...

Bob

what do you know aout the beast of Kandahar? Same basic design but operational

Wow, that is some serious RC flying. Super kool. Let em kick the bad guys a$&!s

But not carrier capable.

Dave is right. The F-35B is the first stealth aircraft to take off and land on an aircraft carrier.

At the expense of nitpicking, the X-47 landings were not radio controlled by a 'pilot' on the deck of the carrier. The aircraft was controlled on the deck by a person on th flight deck, but not landed by him.
Regards,
Gus

Actually, to pick a little bit of nits, the Wasp is an amphibious assault ship. When you say "aircraft carrier" most people mean a ship of the CVN class - which the F-35C is having a bit of problems operating off of...

Bob

It's a really cool looking plane. It's all wing. It's a lifting body. Flying off a carrier.(exclamation point, exclamation point) The military is paving the way and commercial aviation will follow. Scale that bird up to the size of a 747 and I believe that's what passenger jets of the future will look like.

Bob,
Thank you - you are exactly correct. As mind boggling as it is, Lockheed Martin has designed a carrier-based aircraft with the tail hook point too close to the main landing gear and despite correct glide slope and angle of attack approaches, the tail hook "hook skips" the arresting cables and the aircraft does not arrest on the flight deck. In carrier aviation terms, it is called a "bolter". That causes boarding rate problems, which leads to longer time into the wind for the carrier (tactically bad), more diverts because the airplane can't land on the carrier, etc., etc. ALL BAD. Meanwhile, the F-18 Super Hornet enjoys near 100% boarding rates at fractionally the operating cost of Lockheed Martin's stealthy, expensive jet. FWIW.
Regards,
Gus