Sikorsky Joins UCAR Team

Northrop Grumman has added Sikorsky Aircraft to its Unmanned Combat Armed Rotorcraft (UCAR) Phase II team. The helicopter manufacturer joins Kaman Aerospace, L-3 Communications, BAe Systems, The Sabre Group, Natural Selection Inc., and Aero Sciences Technology Associates in the Northrop Grumman preliminary design effort. The competing Lockheed Martin Phase II team includes Bell Helicopter and mission analysts Whitney, Bradley and Brown.

The eight-year, four-phase UCAR effort is funded jointly by the US Army and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It is meant to give the Army an unmanned rotorcraft able to identify and prosecute masked ground targets autonomously or in collaboration with manned systems. The DARPA concept of operations calls for UCAR to plan and re-plan its own missions given voice commands from Longbow Apache and Comanche crews performing their own mission tasks.

Based on experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, the conceptual UCAR system-of-systems is expected to identify and engage dismounted enemy troops that are armed with man-portable air defense systems, rocket propelled grenades, and small arms. The Low-Observable air vehicle is expected to have survivability equal to or greater than manned aircraft. Program objectives also call for a system with 20 to 40% of the Comanche flyway cost and 20 to 50% of Comanche Operating and Support Costs.

Phase I saw four industry teams perform some 50 concept and capability tradestudies to develop system configurations, assess critical risks, and identify system requirements. Northrop Grumman won the right to compete with Lockheed Martin in the Phase II preliminary design effort. Sikorsky Aircraft was unsuccessful in its Phase I UCAR bid, and Northrop Grumman drawings show an air vehicle with Kaman's trademark intermeshing rotor system. Sikorsky is nevertheless expected to refine the Northrop Grumman UCAR system cost and capability in preliminary design. The 15-month Phase II culminates in a preliminary design review in the mid-summer of 2004. A down-select around 1 October 2004 will enable one UCAR team to demonstrate key technologies in Phase III.

UCAR Phase III calls for two flying demonstrators to incorporate key technologies including autonomous and collaborative operations, autonomous flight at low altitudes, and affordable and robust survivability. No new sensors are to be developed for UCAR. Sensor fusion and automatic target recognition are expected to extend target identification and recognition range of existing sensors.

Successful Phase III demonstrations around Fiscal 2006 may move the UCAR program to the Army for Phase IV system maturation. Phase IV around 2009 is expected to demonstrate 60 to 80% of the UCAR objective capability in fieldable prototypes.

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