Lockheed Martin designs new high-altitude surveillance aircraft options

[Zarvan]

Lockheed Martin is designing potential replacements for its U-2 surveillance aircraft. Source: Lockheed Martin
Key Points

• Lockheed Martin is designing options for a successor aircraft to the U-2 and the RQ-4
• The company sees the need for a more survivable follow-on aircraft as anti-aircraft threats proliferate

Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works advanced technology unit has begun possible designs for an optionally manned high-altitude, long-endurance (HALE) follow-on to its manned U-2 and the unmanned Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk, company officials confirmed on 21 August.

"We have to start thinking about a new platform now to get it out in 2025-2030 timeframe," Scott Winstead, Lockheed Martin's U-2 strategic business manager, told IHS Jane's .

While the US Air Force (USAF) has not requested designs for a next-generation surveillance aircraft, Winstead said the company sees the need for a more survivable successor to the RQ-4 and has engaged its engineers on design projects using internal funding.

Winstead said that the company's Skunk Works division frequently designs new technology under so-called 'roadmaps' in various capability areas. For example, the division has cyber, electronic warfare, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) roadmaps in progress.

"As we see where technology is going … we try to bridge the gap between where we are now and where we think we're going," he said. This is what Skunk Works design teams are now doing with the U-2 and RQ-4, he added.

The team is currently pursuing a low-observable, optionally manned version of the U-2, according to Winstead. The ability to remove the pilot from the cockpit would provide the aircraft with the longer endurance of the RQ-4.

He said the aircraft would need "big engines" to power all the same sensors carried by the U-2. The U-2's General Electric F118 engines would be sufficient for the task of taking the new aircraft to 65,000-70,000 ft while powering all those sensors, but if a threat analysis indicates the need to fly higher, an even larger engine might be needed, Winstead added.

While both legacy aircraft will remain capable for decades, Winstead said "neither platform is one you would bring into a wartime environment" given the proliferation of anti-aircraft threats.

U-2 programme director Melani Austin said a next-generation aircraft could cost about as much as the USD2-3 billion in upgrades envisioned for the RQ-4 that will allow it to do most of the U-2's mission when the manned aircraft retires around 2019.

Winstead said Lockheed Martin hopes for a competition among the Pentagon's major aircraft providers that would drive down the cost to about USD3-4 billion for development and production of a fleet of new HALE ISR aircraft to be ready in the 2025 time frame.

"Preliminary design work shows we could get something out there by 2025," he said. "We challenge other companies to do the same."

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Lockheed Martin designs new high-altitude surveillance aircraft options - IHS Jane's 360