XQ-67A Off-Board Sensing Station (OBSS)
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) was selected 24 April 2024 to build production representative flight test articles of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) for the U.S. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC). This option contract award exercises the critical design, build, and flight test on the existing CCA contract with GA-ASI following an initial 6-month phase that culminated in a successful CCA preliminary design review (PDR) earlier this year. The CCA program aims to be a force multiplier, developing a low-cost, modular, unmanned aircraft equipped with advanced sensors or weapons and operating in collaborative teams with the next generation of manned combat aircraft.
In February 2024, GA-ASI successfully conducted the maiden flight of the XQ-67A CCA prototype aircraft validating the “genus/species” concept pioneered by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) as part of the Low-Cost Attritable Aircraft Platform Sharing (LCAAPS) program. This program focused on building several aircraft variants from a common core chassis. Since then, this prototype for CCA has successfully completed two additional test flights, laying the groundwork for a successful production and flight test program. GA-ASI’s CCA production representative design is based upon the XQ-67A Off-Board Sensing Station developed by GA-ASI for the AFRL.
“The CCA program redefines the future of aviation and will shape the USAF acquisition model to deliver affordable combat mass to the warfighter at the speed of relevancy,” said Mike Atwood, Vice President of Advanced Programs for GA-ASI. “Throughout our 30-year history, GA-ASI has been at the forefront of rapidly advancing unmanned aircraft systems that support our warfighters,” said GA-ASI President David R. Alexander. “The USAF is moving forward with GA-ASI due to our focused commitment to unmanned air-to-air combat operations and unmatched UAS experience, ensuring the production of the CCA aircraft at scale to deliver affordable combat mass for the warfighter.”
To complement the CCA contract, GA-ASI will continue to conduct a series of autonomy and mission system tests on the MQ-20 Avenger® UAS and XQ-67A to accelerate the readiness of operational autonomy. These live flight tests will continue to demonstrate the readiness of the full mission capability to support the emerging U.S. Air Force Autonomous Collaborative Platforms (ACP).
The Air Force Research Laboratory’s Aerospace Systems Directorate successfully flew the XQ-67A, an Off-Board Sensing Station, uncrewed air vehicle 28 February 2024, at the General Atomics Gray Butte Flight Operations Facility near Palmdale, California. XQ-67A had been just over two years in the making, moving quickly through the design, build and fly process. While the team initially worked with five industry vendors, AFRL decided at the end of 2021 to exercise the opportunity to build the General Atomics design. This successful flight is initial proof that the genus approach works, and aircraft can be built from a chassis.
The XQ-67A is the first of a second generation of autonomous collaborative platforms. Following the success of the XQ-58A Valkyrie, the first low-cost uncrewed air vehicle intended to provide the warfighter with credible and affordable mass, the XQ-67A proves the common chassis or “genus” approach to aircraft design, build and test. This approach paves the way for other aircraft “species” to be rapidly replicated on a standard genus chassis. This new approach also responds to the challenge of Great Power Competition by speeding delivery of affordable, advanced capability to the warfighter.
This approach will help save time and money by leveraging standard substructures and subsystems, similar to how the automotive industry builds a product line. From there, the genus can be built upon for other aircraft — similar to that of a vehicle frame — with the possibility of adding different aircraft kits to the frame, such as an Off-Board Sensing Station or Off-Board Weapon Station.
An autonomous collaborative platform is structured according to how the warfighter sees these put together: autonomy, human systems integration, sensor and weapons payloads, networks and communications and the air vehicle. The Air Force had been evolving this class of systems since the start of the Low Cost Attritable Aircraft Technologies initiative.
“We must ensure the PRC leadership wakes up every day, considers the risks of aggression, and concludes, “‘Today is not the day,'” said Deputy Defense Secretary Hicks. In remarks September 01, 2023 at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Emerging Technologies for Defense conference in Washington, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks noted that for the past twenty years the PRC has worked to build a modern military carefully crafted to blunt the operational advantages the United States has had for decades.
“But the one advantage they can never blunt, steal, or copy, no matter how hard they try,” she said, “is American ingenuity: our ability to innovate, change the game, and in the military sphere, to imagine, create, and master the future character of warfare.” The Department of Defense has already been investing in what it calls “attritable autonomous systems” like self-piloting ships and uncrewed aircraft. Now is the time, Deputy Secretary Hicks said, “to take all-domain attritable autonomy to the next level: to produce and deliver capabilities to warfighters at the volume and velocity required to deter aggression or win if we’re forced to fight.”
The Pentagon has defined attritable capabilities as those platforms that are unmanned, affordable, reusable, and which allow commanders to tolerate a higher degree of risk in employing them. The major effort that initially explored the genus/species concept was the Low Cost Attritable Aircraft Platform Sharing, program, which fed technology and knowledge forward into the OBSS program that culminated with building and flying the XQ-67A. The intention behind LCAAPS early on was these systems were to augment, not replace, manned aircraft.
The Low Cost Attritable Aircraft Technology (LCAAT) program is exploring a wide range of technology innovations that will enable a new genre of low-cost UAVs. These UAVs deliver long-range responsive capability in near-peer environments where forward basing is difficult or prohibited. Because of their low cost, different classes of UAVs will augment current weapons systems with highly tailored/optimized roles for specific mission activities including weapons delivery, finding and locating targets, jamming, or communications. LCAA can fly into highly contested areas ahead of a manned craft. The manned aircraft will thus be supported by UAVs, thereby increasing the engagement abilities in contested areas. The goal of the LCAAT program is to develop a family of low-cost, attritable UAVs at $3M per unit (based on a purchase quantity of 100 UAVs less payload). The program also focuses on minimizing life-cycle costs with emphasis on operations and sustainment activities that improve turn times while minimizing staffing requirements.
The program will use a product line approach distinguished by continual aircraft design and capability refresh to incorporate emerging technologies in a timely and cost-effective manner. LCAA can be manufactured at a high rate, reducing touch labor and ultimately reducing cost. Designed for a narrow requirement suite, engineering and production cycles can be reduced, supporting rapid response to warfighter needs. This approach also eliminates costly depot maintenance as well as the design restrictions imposed when using existing airframes. LCAA are not built for longevity: acceptance criteria should become less complex, resulting in a quicker production-to-air timeline. Establishing design criteria that will address the ideal cost-to-quality ratio is the next step in this innovative developmental program.
In late 2014 and early 2015, the initial years of the LCAAT initiative, the team began with some in-house designs that evolved into the requirements definition for the Low Cost Attritable Strike Demonstrator, or LCASD, Joint Capability Technology Demonstration. The LCASD team defined, designed, built and tested the XQ-58 for the first time in 2019. The first generation was XQ-58, and that was really about proving the concept that you could build relevant combat capability quickly and cheaply.
The OBSS program built upon the low-cost capability that LCASD proved by leveraging design and manufacturing technology research that had taken place since the first generation and was directed to reduce risk in the development of future generations. The Air Force always intended from the start of LCAAT to have multiple vehicle development spirals or threads of vehicle development. Then once the vehicle is proven ready, you can start integrating stuff with it, such as sensors, autonomy, weapons, payloads and electronics.
With the XQ-67A, the team is using the platform-sharing approach or drawing leverage from automotive industry practices. With advancements in manufacturing technology since the XQ-58, the team aimed to use that system and the technology advancements to create a system design with lower cost and faster build in mind. It's all about low cost and responsiveness.
The team began discussing LCAAPS in 2018, focusing on the notion of “can we provide the acquirer with a new way of buying aircraft that is different and better and quicker than the old traditional way of how we build manned aircraft which pretty much start over from scratch every time. Instead, the team considered the same approach that a car manufacturer applies to building a line of vehicles, where the continuous development over time would work for aircraft, as well.
It's really about leveraging this best practice that we've seen in the automotive and other industries where time to market has decreased, while the time to initial operating capability for military aircraft has increased at an alarming rate. With this genus platform, White said a usable aircraft can be created faster at a lower cost with more opportunities for technology refresh and insertion if new models are being developed and rolled out every few years.
AFRL harnesses science and technology innovation for specific operational requirements to ensure meaningful military capabilities reach the hands of warfighters. The XQ-67 is the first variant to be designed and built from this shared platform. The main objectives are to validate an open aircraft system concept for hardware and software and to demonstrate rapid time-to-market and low development cost.
This project looked at incorporating aspects of the OBSS and the OBWS to different capability concepts. The OBSS was viewed as slower while carrying sensors but have longer endurance, while the OBWS was considered faster and more maneuverable, with less endurance but better range. The Air Force wanted to design both of those but figure out how much of the two you can make common so we could follow this chassis genus species type of approach.
This is all part of a bigger plan and it's all about this affordable mass. This has to be done affordably and this program — even though there's an aircraft at the end that we're going to get a lot of use out of — the purpose of this program was the journey of rapid, low-cost production as much as it was the destination of a relevant combat aircraft. This signals to other companies that there is a new approach to constructing an aircraft, moving away from the conventional method of starting from scratch.
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI), an affiliate of General Atomics, is a leading designer and manufacturer of proven, reliable RPA systems, radars, and electro-optic and related mission systems, including the Predator® RPA series and the Lynx® Multi-mode Radar. With more than eight million flight hours, GA-ASI provides long-endurance, mission-capable aircraft with integrated sensor and data link systems required to deliver persistent situational awareness. The company also produces a variety of sensor control/image analysis software, offers pilot training and support services, and develops meta-material antennas.
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