Vanilla Unmanned, a small business that was featured in an April naval drill, promises “world-record endurance, unmatched payload, and then a disruptive cost profile" in its Group 3 UAV that it hopes will change how the Navy thinks about unmanned aircraft.
The fiscal 2022 shipbuilding budget was never going to kick off a shipbuilding renaissance to transform the U.S. Navy into its envisioned future fleet design. But experts argue it could have done a lot more to get ready for the upcoming wave of shipbuilding.
No sooner had it arrived, one of the five unmanned aircraft headed to California to be equipped with the so-called GMTI-over-Sea capability, giving it the ability to track moving maritime targets as well as moving land targets.
Victory in the next major conflict could very well depend on the effectiveness of drones — from their swarm capabilities to their surveillance and artificial intelligence technologies.
The U.S. Navy conducted its first-ever aerial refueling between a manned aircraft and an unmanned tanker on June 4, with a Boeing-owned MQ-25 Stingray test vehicle performing its first midair tanking mission with a Navy F/A-18E-F Super Hornet.
The U.S. Air Force has wrapped up the first phase of its Golden Horde demonstration effort, putting the service one step closer to developing swarming smart weapons that behave semi-autonomously and use algorithms to seek high-priority targets.