First cat launch of a UAV from a carrier…
X-47 prototype was successfully launched from the USS GEORGE H W BUSH off Chesapeake yesterday.
The X-47 flew for about an hour and made a number of practice approaches to the ship before returning to Pax River and taking the wire there.
Hellva long way from hand launching UAVs off the back deck of a ship and recovering them in a net… Just sayin…
The NFO on that bird was sitting in a trailer at Pax River, eating Ho-Ho’s and drinking a Pepsi while flying it.
However, the future is here.
Not to date myself, but I remember the old DASH drone helicopters that they put on destroyers.
That’s cool stuff. “The future is here”, indeed.
I eagerly await the autonomous medical drones to recover wounded and injured personnel.
LL- Yep, and getting fat too… I remember DASH too… POS damn near knocked us out of the sky one time!
Rev- Yep for better or worse!
Mark- They are already trying that on a very small scale downrange…
I will be truly impressed when the X47 can make #3 wire traps at night in the middle of a hurricane.
I will be even more impressed when it can ‘see and avoid’ that dummy in a Cessna.
I know, I know, baby steps. Gotta make sure the beast can leave before you try to land it.
This is 27 years from the first deployment of a RPV aboard the USS Tarawa LHA-1. We left San Diego with a USMC Pioneer RPV onboard which they bought from Israel. The ship did the first catapult launch (be it from the hanger bay), deck launch and true arrested recovery during that deployment.
SoCal- Yep, but your ‘cat’ was only about 8 feet long! 🙂
Can’t argue. But if a kill is a kill, then a cat shot is …naaaa, doesn’t even compare. Still the Tarawa and the USMC did it first in ’86. More still, in this case, size does matter.
“Maverick” and “Goose” just became obsolete.