Royal Navy, Fleet Air Arm and the age of the UCAV

I know, but it sounds rather too ambitious to me.

oh so jaded….

Personally I think it will just be yet another technology demonstrator programme, funding for keeping skills up, blah, blah, blah………

there is a VTOL programme:

http://www.hightech-edge.com/new-stealth-unmanned-aerial-vehicle-uav-great-britian-royal-air-force/5387/

now admittedly this predates the SDSR, but given the nature of the project i wouldn’t expect them to announce its death.

So, yes of course there is a big deck to take off of, but that sort of thing would be very potent and common with other decks in the RN…

Why would their be a VTOL requirement? The Yanks are already working towards a CATOBAR drone.

and on another note, is it really too far away? are we saying that the RN is so busy trying to hold onto what its been promised that it hasn’t got time to plan for the future?

or is it that the new take off and landing infrastructure on the deck of the carriers has made it hard for there to be any naval UCAVs in the pipeline other than the vertical take off variety (which look pretty good to me)?

well depending on who you talk to, the RAF UCAV won’t see service until some time between 2020 and 2030.

There is definitely room for joint development between the RN and RAF, but will that ever happen? Are the requirements even the same?

All a bit far away I would think, I would expect UK UAVs to be have catapuilt launch capability in the future, I would think it would be beneficial for the French as well so hopefully the joint venture would be capable of doing armed recon.