BAE Taranis Officially Unveiled
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Tuesday, 13 of July , 2010 at 12:48 am
For those of you with spectacular memories, the BAE Taranis will look familiar to you from our trip to the AUVSI Expo last year where we saw a little model of it in the BAE booth. Britain’s Ministry of Defense Defence has now officially unveiled a full scale prototype of the Taranis low observable unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV), which is scheduled to begin flight trials next year. However, according to Peter Felstead, editor of Jane’s Defence Weekly, “this isn’t an aircraft that will go into service, it’s a tech demo.” Well, that’s unfortunate, but seeing as both the US and Russia are currently developing UCAVs, my guess is that we’ll see the Taranis (or something very much like it) turn into more than a tech demo in the near future.
We actually emailed BAE after AUVSI (i.e. in 2009) for more details on Taranis, and they sent us a few specifications… Check them out, after the jump.
Airframe
Blended wing/body design of ’swept delta’ configuration, with no vertical tail surfaces. Retractable tricycle landing gear. Composites construction.
Mission payloads
In ISTAR role, advanced EO/IR, radar and tactical datalinks for intelligence gathering, communications and imagery exploitation. For deep strike role, two internal bays for kinetic and non-kinetic laser-guided weapons. As of 2007, no actual weapon releases are envisaged during initial test flights, but emulated drops of ground attack weapons will be done.
Guidance and control
“Fully integrated autonomous [decision-making] systems.”Power plant
One non-afterburning turbofan; possibly the 28.9 kN (6,500 lb st) Rolls-Royce Adour 951.Performance
Max level speed: High subsonic
It’s that “fully integrated autonomous [decision-making] systems” bit that’s the most potentially exciting, even as the Ministry of Defence practically trips over itself saying “should such systems enter into service, they will at all times be under the control of highly trained military crews on the ground.” That’s certainly the safe way to do it, although it implies a compromise when it comes to performance, since robots are just better than pilots at some things.
[ BAE Taranis ] VIA [ BBC News ]
Comments (2)
Category: Military
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Comment by Oystein
Made Tuesday, 13 of July , 2010 at 1:04 am
The cylons are here!
Comment by Bob
Made Wednesday, 14 of July , 2010 at 2:52 pm
Funny how they name after the god of thunder. This crap is getting out of hand all the while we ooh and ahhh at our own demise
