Message posted by casper_n (Member since 01/24/2011) on June 02, 2022 at 9:57:26 PST:
NGAD demonstrator is being billed as an X plane. Well, if we think back about 20 years, there were some other X-plane demonstrators flying around. Boeing had the X-45, Lockheed the X-44, and Northrop with the X-47. All tailless, unmanned, recon aircraft. Now, I'm taking a bit of a leap here, but the X-44 was likely a demonstrator for Lockheed's RQ-170, right? And the X-47 (once stripped of carrier landing gear) no doubt helped with Northrop's development of the RQ-180. So, concurrent development of demonstrators led to (at least) two aircraft which were acquired -- it wasn't strictly a competition for a single craft. Everything we've heard about NGAD and the iterative development, series of disparate systems, etc., makes me think the same thing is probably going on now. I bet Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed, and all bid for the demonstrators and, according to the DARPA requirements published in 2015, probably two of them were selected to build. DARPA's Aerospace Innovation Initiative (2015) "“to develop and fly two X-plane prototypes that demonstrate advanced technologies for future aircraft. Teams will compete to produce the X-plane prototypes, one focused on future Navy operational capabilities and the other on future Air Force operational capabilities.”
In Reply to: Re: NGAD enters new stage posted by Primetime on June 02, 2022 at 9:23:53 PST:
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