OrionHunter
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Taranis, the most advanced aircraft ever built by British engineers, surpassed all expectations during its first flight trials.
Although its speed has not been disclosed, it is understood to be designed to be supersonic and capable of crossing continents. It is hoped that Taranis will lead to stealth jets and drones able to hit targets deep inside enemy territory while evading their defences.
Details of the programme have been highly classified, revealing little beyond its existence, but officials yesterday disclosed film of test flights carried out at an unnamed location, believed to have been in Woomera, Australia, last year.
Until now, it had been shrouded in secrecy. But defence chiefs have provided a brief glimpse of Britain’s top secret experimental stealth drone, declaring that it had “surpassed all expectations” during closely guarded test flights.
The £185 million Taranis, named after the Celtic god of thunder, has been billed as the most technologically advanced aircraft ever built in the UK.
The remotely-piloted drone, constructed by BAE Systems, is a “combat vehicle demonstrator” to test and develop technology for future generations of fighters and unmanned vehicles.
Nigel Whitehead, the group managing director of BAE Systems, said that in a maiden 15-minute flight, Taranis performed a perfect take-off, rotation, “climb-out” and landing, piloted remotely by Bob Fraser, a former RAF pilot. Taranis is not currently designed to carry weapons, but may be used to test them in the future.
Lessons learnt from the drone will one day help in producing a replacement for the Typhoon and F35 fighters, said Philip Dunne, the minister for defence equipment. “We need to be thinking now about what the next generation of aircraft will look like,” he explained.
Video: Successful test flight for Taranis stealth drone - Telegraph
So, lessons learnt from the drone will one day help in producing a replacement for the Typhoon and F35 fighters? Right! As I had predicted 10 years earlier (but scoffed at) that the future of air warfare lies not in manned aircraft but in drones/UCAVs where there would be no need to put the pilots in danger. There would be total situational awareness for pilots sitting thousands of miles away controlling the UCAVs from their operational centers.
It would be like sitting in a simulator and controlling the combat drones but here it would be the real thing as all info including imagery would be beamed back to the control room in real time.
A few squadrons of small but heavily armed stealth UCAVs flying simultaneously into enemy territory would be able to create havoc. UCAVs could also be used as CAPs which aircraft are presently performing, resulting in enormous expenditure on fuel and pilot fatigue.
The bottom line is that the future of air warfare lies in stealth UCAVs and not conventional aircraft which would be passe within the next 30-40 years.
