Aviation history was made last week: an unmanned aircraft — the X-47B — successfully completed an air-to-air refueling demonstration, taking 4,000 pounds of fuel from a KC-707 tanker aircraft. This historic achievement followed last year’s equally revolutionary series of carrier launch and recovery operations by the X-47B.
You would think that the Navy, cognizant of the need to take advantage of the promise of robotics would be aggressively pushing to do further testing, to make unmanned carrier-based surveillance and strike aircraft real, and thus extend the reach and power of the aircraft carrier — the crown jewel of America’s conventional power projection forces. Instead, the Navy wants to decommission the two X-47Bs (named Salty Dog 501 and Salty Dog 502) and put them in museums, even though they have 80% of their approved flight hours left.
The Navy has a serious warfighting concept problem. Garbage LCS, F-35, DDX, $3B flat-tops without well decks and more.
Easier to throw those billions into a burn-pit.
As an aside, this isn't just a Navy problem. I saw the little X-45 hanging from a ceiling in the Smithsonian some years back.
Pilot...
Mafia...
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