Missile manufacturer MBDA is set to flight-test a 400-kg (880 lb.), 4-m uncrewed aircraft system as part of the demonstrator program for the European Future Combat Air System (FCAS).
As one of the companies in the remote carrier development pillar of FCAS, MBDA’s efforts are focused on what is increasingly being described as expendable remote carrier (ERC) platforms.
Pillar partner Airbus is leading on the development of larger recoverable remote carriers (RRC), while Spanish joint venture Satnus—made up of GMV, Sener Aeroespacial and Tecnobit-Grupo Oesía—is working on the algorithms and systems that will enable them both to be collaborative.
Both the ERC and RRC platforms will be demonstrated as part of Phase 1B and Phase 2 of the FCAS program, with flights of both expected to take place at the end of the decade, prior to FCAS moving into full-scale development around 2030.
Revealing details of the planned demonstrator during last week’s Paris Air Show, Jean Judde de Lariviere, head of FCAS business development at MBDA, said ERCs will provide a significant tactical advantage to the air forces that use them.
MBDA has opted for a long, thin, cruise-missile-like airframe with retractable wings, featuring intakes for the engine—likely a small, low-cost turbofan—embedded in the sides of the fuselage.
Designed to be modular, the ERCs are built to carry different payloads, such as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sensors, relays, electronic warfare systems and jammers.
The ERC’s role is to ensure that the adversary “does not understand what we are doing,” de Lariviere said.
With these ERCs, “we are going to use electronic warfare to disturb [the adversary] … and use deception to hide the key elements of the air operations we are conducting,” he added.
MBDA is familiar with building long-range, expendable airframes through the development of cruise missiles, but advancing the ERC is challenged by the need for it to have a similar performance to the fighter aircraft alongside which they will be operating. They also need to be small and light enough to be launched from that fighter.
The demonstrator ERC is also expected to have a so-called 1-hr. “playtime”—or mission endurance—during which it will operate its various sensors.
“[The ERC] will need to have a wide envelope of operation,” said Grégoire Faron, FCAS program manager at MBDA France.
No decision has been made about whether the ERC will need to be launched from the fighter externally and internally, but that will be part of the discussion within the demonstrator program, Faron said. Other launch options could be from ground vehicles, warships, air-dropped from transport aircraft or even launched from RRCs.
Airbus officials believe remote carriers could be rapidly iterated and adapted to meet new, urgent threats, for which the fighter would require more time to be adapted.
“You can completely change the tactics with the mass provided by remote carriers, and the fact that it is uncrewed means you could take different type of risk profiles getting closer to a specific target or detection area,” Bruno Fichefeux, the head of FCAS at Airbus, told Aerospace DAILY.
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