Article Breaking Defense, avec le titre : DARPA’s aerial turducken, the LongShot, still cooking towards 2022 milestone
https://breakingdefense.com/2021/11/dar ... milestone/
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The LongShot effort was “initiated” in February and was described at the time by DARPA as an “air-launched unmanned air vehicle (UAV) with the ability to employ multiple air-to-air weapons.” In other words, a plane launches the LongShot mothership, which in turn launches its own air-to-air missiles. The mothership could be sized to be carried by fighter jets and bombers.
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these kinds of complicated designs take time, and DARPA is still years away from the first LongShot prototype flight.
“The designs continue to mature toward a Phase I preliminary design review and work to-date supports the feasibility of the LongShot concept,” DARPA LongShot program manager Lt. Col. Paul Calhoun told Breaking Defense this week.
DARPA spokesperson Randolph Atkins added that the agency initially envisioned flight tests starting no earlier than fiscal 2024, and that “remains true.” The next milestone, preliminary design reviews, should happen by the end of the summer in 2022.
Defense giants General Atomics, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman were all selected in February to provide preliminary designs, and the Navy and Air Force could be the eventual customers. Those contractors are still engaged, DARPA said.
DARPA budget documents show the agency planned to spend $24 million on the project in 2021 and another $36 million next year. Those unclassified documents, published in May, said that in fiscal 2022 DARPA hopes to undertake wind tunnel and missile separation tests before completing a critical design review.
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