Originally Posted by
Bravo73
https://www.caa.co.uk/newsroom/news/...ons-in-the-uk/
NPAS’s ambition is to fly an uncrewed aircraft, beyond visual line of sight, over a six month period, in an environment that is representative of where NPAS crewed aircraft would be tasked. It will look to test, and verify, not only the payload capabilities, which are identical to the performance of our crewed aircraft, but also validate the onboard DAA capabilities. This will allow NPAS to understand better what future air support capabilities it could adopt.”
Unmanned, BVLOS, 3 tonne drone (Mojave* sized), over a typical NPAS environment (built up area), sounds like someone’s found a barrel of money that needs spending.
*
The Mojave drone will probably cost a little over $32 million each (the cost of a MQ-9A Reaper) and $5,000 an hour to fly, for a total of $52 million over 4,000 hours.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a45574095/worlds-first-aircraft-carrier-drone-force/#