The Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) Aerospace Systems Directorate successfully flew General Atomics’ XQ-67A uncrewed air vehicle on Feb. 28, 2024, at the General Atomics Gray Butte Flight Operations Facility near Palmdale, California.
The goal for the AFRL is to use a standard airframe with standard substructures and systems to eventually advance drone designs quicker than ever before. This would include equipping them with an Off-Board Weapon Station (OBWS) for combat or the Off-Board Sensing Station (OBSS) depending on the mission. Think of it as a modular drone platform of sorts with pieces that can quickly and easily be swapped out.
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The main objectives here are to validate an open aircraft system concept for hardware and software and to demonstrate rapid time-to-market and low development cost. We wanted to design both of those but figure out how much of the two you can make common so we could follow this chassis genus species type of approach,” said Doug Meador, autonomous collaborative platform capability lead with AFRL’s Aerospace Systems Directorate.
