Video: Unmanned fighter aircraft loaded aboard USS Harry S. Truman

One more step to removing the jellyware from the aircraft.
 
Christmas is coming. I wonder who gets to unwrap it? Master Chief, CAG, Captain, or Admiral. More likely a group of 19 year old sailors.
Considering what they've been doing with other UFOs (ah, UAVs), it is about time we see if a full sized can do carrier ops.
 
My neighbor who works during the week up at Pax as a contractor was telling me about this. Apparently they have a glove now that the flight deck folks can wear that is used for taxiing the thing around. I don't think that was part of these tests, but it is in the works apparently. We hit the Truman back in July for a deck cert, and VX-23 had the UCAS computers loaded into an F/A-18B that they were beating up the pattern with to test the software. I bet that was a whole boatload of fun for those guys flying in it.....weird to see them flying the case I pattern at 200'. At least they didn't hog the night air plan :)
 
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Funny thing....if you hadn't posted this, I probably never would have noticed that the thing is just sitting on the flight deck of HST one pier away from me.

Picked up the binos this morning and saw it on the bow.....contractor pucnhing away on a laptop testing all of the flight controls. Definitely a funny looking thing to see on a carrier. Are they actually planning to do a CAT shot with this thing???
 
I went to a AIAA presentation on the airplane a few months ago. Pretty interesting how they are working up for cats and traps with the real thing at Pax River prior to embarking.

They have a "remote" for using in deck ops and one of the man machine interfaces that took some understanding is how to make the joy stick move so it would be more intuitive for the yellow shirts. Still had not decided who would do the deck driving when I heard the spiel.

If the speaker was to be believed, the Top Hook award will be permanently awarded to the drone. Nothing but OK-3.:D

I think NAVAIR is close to issuing an RFP for a operational version. Competition looks like it will be between Northrop and Boeing.

Cheers
 
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