Loyal wingman - new drone revealed by Boeing in Australia
 

Well well.
I knew there were all sorts of classified things things going on out in the GAFA.
But this is very interesting.
I wonder what other secrets Woomera is currently hiding.

https://www.smh.com.au/business/comp...27-p510ky.htmlAustralian designed and built autonomous drones could fly alongside RAAF aircraft acting as a “wingman” that would take enemy fire or increase attack firepower, if a research program revealed by aerospace giant Boeing takes off.


More pix and detail here:

http://thedrive.com/the-war-zone/266...force-tomorrow
The company and the federal government on Wednesday revealed the until-now secretive program that has been underway for several years in Brisbane.

Defence Minister Christopher Pyne said the federal government would invest $40 million over four years to develop a test model of what would be the first new Australian-backed military aircraft since World War II. [img]https://static.ffx.io/images/$zoom_0.322%2C$multiply_1%2C$ratio_1.776846%2C$width_1059%2C $x_31%2C$y_47/t_crop_custom/w_375/q_86%2Cf_auto/635e04ead3a8a612ed4bbb965db24ee73d34251c A model of the unmanned Boeing Airpower Teaming System which was unveiled at the Australian International Airshow, Avalon, Victoria on Wednesday.

Dubbed the Boeing Airpower Teaming System, or “Loyal Wingman”, Boeing expects to build and test a concept model of the almost 12-metre armed and unmanned aircraft in Australia in 2020.

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Between four and 16 of the drones, guided with artificial intelligence, would accompany military aircraft - including Australia’s F-35, Hornet, Super Hornet, Growler, Poseidon and Wedgtail jets – to expand their attacking power and range.

The drones, unveiled at the Avalon Airshow near Geelong on Wednesday, would also serve as an expendable shield that would take fire when under attack.

“You just extend your reach because you’ve got a team of these systems that fly alongside you that you’re in command of,” said Shane Arnott, a director of Boeing’s defence and security research arm.

“The air commander or the operator can take increased risk because you haven’t got a person in this particular platform. So as you go into the higher threat environment it’s better for one of these to take a hit than it is for a manned platform.”

Dr Arnott said demand from customers would determine whether the Wingman would go into production, and that other militaries were already showing interest. [img]https://static.ffx.io/images/$zoom_0.421%2C$multiply_1%2C$ratio_1.776846%2C$width_1059%2C $x_241%2C$y_49/t_crop_custom/w_375/q_86%2Cf_auto/ba59db7ac68f10f59ebd13fd71f95da43e43a78c Defence Minister Christopher Pyne said the federal government would invest $40 million over four years to develop a test model.CREDIT:ALEX ELLINGHAUSEN

"One of the reasons we’ve done this in Australia... [is] there’s a lot of space for us to go and fly and try, and fail, and hopefully succeed,” he said.

If it goes into production, Boeing said it intended to build the drones somewhere in Australia, which Mr Pyne said would bring significant opportunities to export the Wingman to other Five Eyes military partners.

“This is the first aircraft concept that Australia has invested in, in the military, since the Boomerang [fighter aircraft] in 1942 to ’45,” Mr Pyne said.

“But more importantly it’s the decision by the government to invest in the capability here in Australia - our own ingenuity, or own innovation, supporting Australian research and development.”

However Mr Pyne said the program was years away from possible exports or the drones entering Australia’s military arsenal.

Boeing developed the Loyal Wingman concept and pitched to the Australian government and RAAF.

“Boeing, like many other corporations around the world… recognised that Australia was taking seriously the largest build up in our military capability in peace time history, and all of those companies are interested in being part of that story," he said.

Was talking to the designers of this a few years ago, they had a simple idea of using a drone launched from an Apache helicopter to do forward reconnaissance and then retreat behind the battle line only to be picked up on the way home after ordinances were dispatched. The product was already quite well developed, but these things take a lot of time to test/certify.

Boeing unveiling video
 

Here it is As Boeing related this video a few minutes back


cheers

Article/video/photo on Flight Global.


Surely a contradiction in terms! https://www.pprune.org/images/smilies/wink2.gif

(Moved from duplicate - (now deleted) thread.

USAF to buy Skyborg drones for testing ? Alert 5

USAF to buy Skyborg drones for testing

The U.S. Air Force will soon start procuring drones for its Skyborg program with a goal of selecting winning designs by end of the summer.

The new program executive officer for fighters and advanced aircraft, Col. Dale White, told Air Force Magazine the service will begin soliciting for bids this month.Kratos Defense’s XQ-58A Valkyrie is expected to participate in the competition as well as Boeing with its loyal wingman concept that it is designing for Australia.

The final design is expected to enter service by the end of 2023.

For more information, hit the Source below

Source

Loyal wingman just completed its first test flight

Wow - impressive.
Interesting to see those YF-23 type `tailevators'.

https://www.defensenews.com/air/2021...s-payload-bay/

Valkyrie drone launches even smaller drone from inside payload bay

WASHINGTON — The Kratos XQ-58A Valkyrie drone successfully launched an even smaller unmanned aircraft from inside its internal weapons bay on March 26, the U.S. Air Force announced Monday.

During the Valkyrie’s sixth flight test at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, it opened its payload bay doors during flight for the first time and released an ALTIUS-600, a small, tube-launched autonomous drone made by Area-I, a Georgia-based company that designs unmanned aerial systems.....

ALTIUS-600 can be launched for a variety of missions, including electronic warfare, signals intelligence, counter-UAS, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and it can be outfitted to produce kinetic effects. It can weigh up to 27 pounds — including a 6-pound payload stored in its nose — and has an endurance of about four hours, according to Area-I.

Both Kratos and Area-I worked with the Air Force Research Laboratory to develop software and fabricate a carriage that would allow the Valkyrie to release the ALTIUS-600, the lab said in a release.

Once the launch of the ALTIUS system was finished, the Valkyrie completed additional tests geared toward expanding the aircraft’s flight envelope, the lab said....

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on;
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on

You Tube

Another successful flight for the first loyal wingman and well as first flight for number 2

Name change / rebranding now to be named Ghost Bat

Terrible name - sounded wanky to me, turns out it is!
https://www.urbandictionary.com/defi...rm=Ghost%20bat

TurbanTicks can make up anything they like: https://australian.museum/learn/animals/bats/ghost-bat/

GUess they had it coming Down Under lol

cheers

Yes, either someone with a superb sense of humour or someone who was so naively and completely enamored with their own “marketing” degree, named it. I’ll go with the latter, sadly.

If you are able to design, develop and manufacture advanced technology like this you get to call it what you want and can ignore noises off.

Scottie from Marketing would think it great!

"Loyal wingman - where the bloody hell are you?"

‘Ghost Bat’ :E

Does that mean that LANCA/Mosquito can be called “Wafty Crank”? :ok:

Boeing has withdrawn from Skyborg, but has an MQ-28 in the US atm

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...-is-in-the-u-s

Ghost Bat - titter.
A RAAF insider told me the Spams were warned what it meant but proceeded anyway.
Loyal Wingman sounds a lot more `murican.
Or Loyal Wingperson...

Can’t use wingperson as it has the word “son” in it… :cool:

I believe that closed compound words should be fine as per human and mankind. The issue is when they are not. So really airman, wingman and also woman should all be just fine!

What does it mean?

Post #16 refers

I am reminded of the old 8 Sqn Shackleton sticker…. ”8 Screws are better than 4 Blow-Jobs”

https://www.urbandictionary.com/defi...rm=Ghost%20bat

Pentagon is going to be buying for Research and Engineerng usage

https://breakingdefense.com/2022/10/...ost-bat-drone/

The Warzone linked an interesting tweet. It has CGI picture of an MQ-28 doing an arrested landing on a QNLZ 2 carrier


Exerpt from the article

how does loyal wingman with a pilot in a lead aircraft (F18/F35) controlling a drone swarm differ from a pilot in a portacabin at Creech controlling a drone swarm? I don't really see the advantage, in fact having somebody fly a plane and be cognizant of threats to their aircraft at the same time as executing a battle plan over the horizon seems a lot of work for not a lot of advantage. And all this relies on good comms links, are they assured against a decent opponent with EW/satellite shoot down capability? And comms bandwidth and versatility on a fighter aircraft (or even a widebody AWACS) is never going equal the comms available to a portacabin..

For starters all the F-18 in the RAAF have a second crewman so that crewman would be available to control them. Also its a strong rumor that the E-7's are more getting consoles from which these can be controlled. Also rumored the tankers will be getting a station as well. At least intitially I think these aircraft primary role will be a escort of larger assets (awac/tankers) or CAP over ground facilites like forward airfields freeing up manned fighters. later if/when the technology matures maybe they will be escorts for other fighters like the F-35 / NGAD

https://thehill.com/policy/technolog...ical-aircraft/

AI can fly a fast jet whilst the fast jet pilot manages the loyal wingmen, makes sure the UAV tanker is on the way to the rendevous point etc.

Years ago DERA or similar found that your average FJ pilot could manage 3 other aircraft at the same time.

Got to get your portacabin to talk to the drone... And that's pretty much only gunna happen one way, and that equals a serious vulnerability.

a controlling plane would use radio/satellite to communicate with the drones (giving away all their positions if radio) whilst the portacabin 10,000km away is satellite only. Radio can be jammed just as well as satellites, if not more so by decent EW., If the opposition can disable satellites they can certainly jam radio/spoof GPS over the ground targets. The difference is satellites can have multiple redundancies (starlink, there's a a lot to knock down....). This loyal wingman concept still strikes me as old Air Force trying to keep manned planes for the sake of it

Just to clarify. They already had UAV consoles and weren't happy. When Boeing PR released that information, years ago. When the E-7 was a POS and would never do what they wanted it to. How things have changed in that program.

The difference is between the broad beam transmissions required between a satellite and an aircraft which can be detected and the tight beam directional stealthy transmissions which link the aircraft in a swarm. e.g.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/1...0/1/012058/pdf

That may change with LEO constellations such as Starshield which use lasers for secure comms inside the constellation and directional beams to receivers with low latency - but that will be next generation.

There's a distinct radiated power Vs distance advantage to an airborne platform 50 miles behind a UCAV, plus the tight beam advantage mentioned by someone above. Don't get me wrong, a portacabin has it's place, but an EW heavy environment I'd say isn't one. As for GPS, pretty sure no one is building any UCAVs that are going to be dependent on it, the vulnerability there is pretty obvious!

Australian government is looking at expedited delivery of 'block 2' ghost bats

https://www.australiandefence.com.au...st-bat-program