Boeing's UCAAS candidate

[lieqiang]

Pictures have been coming out of Boeing's entry into the UCAAS competition, which will be the first autonomous carrier based aircraft employed by USN. Plans are to eventually field four per aircraft carrier, and with the longer loiter times common with drones they'll take up a lot of the slack of current F-18 buddy tanker system.





The designs that favor low observability are interesting, it was assumed that CBARS would operate relatively close to the CVBG but maybe they are thinking a lot closer to the strike package.

Other competitors are General Atomics with a fatter Predator, and LM with something based on the Sentinal drone:

[lieqiang]

Some pictures have come out of Boeing's candidate and we have finally found the air intake, it's on top.



I can't imagine the engineering challenges that thing faces especially with the low speed stable landings required for carriers. Maybe their goal is relatively stealthy from targets below (like ships) so could loiter a 150 miles out from a ship/shore target for ISR and additionally refuel incoming strike package elements.