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Gegene
14th Jun 2005, 12:12
Unveilling the nEURONn Europe’s UCAV demonstrator
2005-06-13

Monday June 13th, 2005, as French Republic President visited the Dassault Aviation static display, nEUROn Europe’s UCAV demonstrator real-size model was unveiled to the public in presence of all the program’s partners.

The nEUROn program has been launched by the French Defense Minister at the 2003 Paris Air Show. nEUROn, Europe’s UCAV demonstrator, is a Technological Demonstrator: it will not answer to military operational requirements or needs, but it will allow application, integration and validation of technologies already existing or to be developed for unmanned flying vectors. Its aim is not to perform military missions, but to demonstrate maturity and effectiveness of technical solutions.

Ever since the beginning of the program, the French authorities have clearly stated their will that the UCAV technological Demonstrator project should contribute to the build-up of a European defense identity by fully opening it to co-operation. As such, half of the tasks will be entrusted to non-French industrial partners.

After consultation with many European countries, both at Government and at industrial levels, the resulting industrial team answers these criteria and offers the best guarantees for success of the project. It includes (in the chronological order in which the agreements have been signed):


SAAB (Sweden) which is entrusted with the general design, the equipped fuselage, the avionics, the fuel system and part of the flight testing;
Hellenic Aerospace Industry (HAI) is responsible for the rear fuselage, the exhaust pipe and the test rig;
EADS (Spain) will bring its experience for the wings, the ground station, and the data link integration;
RUAG (Switzerland) is taking care of the wind tunnel tests, and the weapon interface;
Alenia (Italy) will, among others, contribute with a new concept of internal weapon bay (Smart Weapon Bay), as well as by the design and development of the electrical power system, the air data system and the flight tests.

In addition to being the design authority, Dassault Aviation takes care of the general design and architecture of the system, the flight control system, the final assembly and the ground tests as well as the flight tests.

To date, the various Memoranda Of Understanding between European companies concerning work packages have been concluded. The industrial team have started the conceptual definition and the feasibility studies of the technological demonstrator, aiming at a first flight mid-2010.

[IMG]http://img156.echo.cx/img156/1063/5306126316wk.jpg http://img229.echo.cx/img229/897/z22neuron003h60011xz.jpg http://img293.echo.cx/img293/1240/z23neuron004h00160011jt.jpg http://img157.echo.cx/img157/3183/z24neuron006h00260012tt.jpg

This is the future of a good part of Europe Air Forces as well as Navies.

What do you thnik of the developement of European Aerospace and weapon industries to compete with that of the USA?

ORAC
14th Jun 2005, 12:51
Zero. Insufficient R&D budget to compete in design and to few countries spending enough on defence to ensure enough market share and lower unit cost for overseas sales.

Especially if, as usual, France will only take part in programmes if they are guaranteed design lead. A somewhat distorted "European" industry.

Gegene
14th Jun 2005, 15:14
2Topic Review (Newest First)
ORAC

Do you care to elaborate on this? It seems to me that you are way off the mark so i'm pretty much interested on your sources...

SASless
14th Jun 2005, 15:33
What is the threat this weapon system is supposed to counter? Armenian immigrants?