Boeing Unveils 'Loyal Wingman' UAV Developed In Australia
Aviation Week & Space Technology
Graham Warwick
Feb 26, 2019
Boeing, for the first time, has reached offshore to develop a military aircraft specifically intended for sale globally. Engineered in Australia, Boeing’s Airpower Teaming System (ATS) is a fighter-like unmanned aircraft designed to operate alongside manned combat and intelligence platforms.
A full-scale mockup of the ATS has been unveiled at the Australian International Airshow in Avalon. The aircraft is being developed by Boeing Autonomous Systems and Boeing’s Phantom Works International unit in Australia, where a concept demonstrator is scheduled to fly next year.
"Fighter-like" Airpower Teaming System has 2,000-nm range
Initial variant designed for intelligence and electronic warfare
Being developed commercially by Boeing, but in partnership with the
Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) with funding from the Canberra government and the involvement of local suppliers, the ATS is intended to be produced in Australia and marketed to defense customers worldwide.
The ATS is designed to augment the capabilities of manned platforms at a fraction of their cost, affordably increasing their ability to counter future threats. But, by being developed overseas, it also is intended to be more easily and flexibly tailored to the needs of export customers than a U.S. system.
The demonstrator is being developed under the Loyal Wingman Advanced Development Program, which is being supported by A$40 million ($28.5 million) over four years in Australian government funding and A$62 million from Boeing—its largest investment in an unmanned-aircraft program outside the U.S.
The 38-ft.-long aircraft has a stealthy chined fuselage, lambda-planform wing, caret inlets and butterfly tail and is powered by a single commercial turbofan—an unspecified light business-jet engine. The ATS is designed to fly independently or in tandem with manned platforms, using artificial intelligence to maintain a safe distance between aircraft.
Performance details are sparse.
The ATS has a range of 2,000 nm and the ability to keep up with the types of platforms with which it will team, such as the RAAF’s
F/A-18E/F Super Hornet combat aircraft and electronic-attack
EA-18G Growlers, and its commercial-derivative airborne-early-warning E-7A Wedgetails and maritime-patrol
P-8A Poseidons—all of which are Boeing-built.
The unmanned aircraft is intended to be low-cost, modular and flexible, with the ability to reconfigure rapidly for different missions using “snap-on, snap-off” payloads, says Kristin Robertson, vice president and general manager of Boeing Autonomous Systems. The initial multimission variant is designed for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and electronic warfare.
The design of the ATS was based on discussions with customers globally who indicated they are struggling to balance quality with quantity, while the need to adapt to fast-changing threats and the expense of highly capable manned platforms put pressure on their budgets. “When you look at the global market, it is really about them wanting more for less,” says Robertson.
“Allies around the world are looking for ways to maximize and extend their [force] structures. Autonomous systems and some of the technologies behind them can make more of a game-changing leap in affordability and quantity, to complement their existing fleets,” she says. Boeing sees low cost, both as a vehicle and as a system teamed with manned platforms, as an inherent advantage of the ATS.
“As we looked around the world, we saw that what will be needed is similar to how we would approach the commercial market, and we looked for a more flexible business model,” Robertson says. “We saw this as an opportunity to pair capabilities . . . in terms of the flexibility and design approach and the partnership with Australia. We think that provided a unique and competitive approach for us.”
ATS is part of Autonomous Systems’ portfolio, along with Insitu’s small tactical unmanned aircraft, Liquid Robotics’ Wave Glider unmanned surface vehicle and Boeing’s Echo Voyager large unmanned undersea vehicle. The lineup also includes the X-37B reusable spaceplane and the Phantom Express reusable launch vehicle now being built for DARPA. Boeing additionally is converting QF-16 target drones for the U.S. Air Force and developing the MQ-25 carrier-based unmanned aerial-refueling aircraft for the U.S. Navy.
The Phantom Works has built this type of vehicle before, but in the U.S. The 26.5-ft.-long, lambda-wing X-45A unmanned combat air vehicle flew in 2002 for DARPA and the U.S. Air Force and demonstrated autonomous defense suppression. A 36-ft.-long, flying-wing X-45C/X-46A was planned to follow for DARPA and the U.S. Navy, but was terminated in 2007. Boeing subsequently completed the prototype as the company-funded Phantom Ray demonstrator, which first flew in 2011.
The ATS is similar in some ways to these vehicles. It is also resembles McDonnell Douglas’ entry in the Joint Strike Fighter competition, but this is coincidental, says Boeing. All the engineering was conducted in Australia, and several different configurations were studied before settling on the final design.
“We are global, and that is an important point here. We can leverage that global talent footprint and experience in autonomous systems,” says Robertson. “We teamed with Australia, and they are leading design and development of the Boeing Airpower Teaming System, with local industry support.” Suppliers include
BAE Systems Australia, Ferra Engineering and RUAG Australia.
Boeing’s largest presence outside the U.S. is in Australia, where since 2000 the company has acquired most of the major names in local aircraft manufacturing, including the former Government Aircraft Factories and Hawker de Havilland. “This is one of the first times, as Boeing, that we have created a new product in a country like Australia,” says Shane Arnott, director of Phantom Works International.
The Wedgetail airborne-early-warning-and-control version of the
Boeing 737 was developed in close cooperation with the RAAF and subsequently sold to South Korea and Turkey, with the UK expected to purchase the aircraft. The wing kit for the
Joint Direct Attack Munition Extended Range (JDAM-ER) was developed by Boeing and the Australian Defense Science and Technology Organization.
“[ATS] is the first time we have done a clean-sheet design and development of an aircraft [offshore],” says Arnott. “Why have we done this in Australia? Part of it is that we are announcing a partnership with the Royal Australian Air Force. Part of it is we’ve seen that we should invest in the environment there, where the country is realizing it’s hot to do innovation so it’s going to be a key part of the agenda at the federal level,” he says.
Arnott cites the RAAF’s Plan Jericho initiative, launched in 2015 to help protect Australia from technologically sophisticated and rapidly morphing threats. “Jericho is a dedicated transformation plan that [ATS and teaming] broadly fits within,” says Arnott. The plan’s central concept is to move from a force “that uses people to operate machines and cooperate with other people, to a force in which people and machines operate together,” states the RAAF, which calls this “augmented intelligence.”
Arnott also cites Australia’s Defense Industrial Capability Plan, which aims to build an industry able to meet Australia’s defense needs to 2028. This is supported by the Defense Export Strategy, released in 2018, which recognizes the industry cannot sustain itself on the needs of the Australian Defense Force alone. Objectives of the strategy include strengthening the partnership between government and industry to achieve greater export success, and building a more sustainable and globally competitive industry to support Australian defense needs. The ATS program taps into this environment of a customer need for innovation and a government desire to strengthen its industry.
Using its virtual warfare laboratories and working with defense customers in Australia, the UK and U.S., Boeing saw “there is a really challenging future ahead of us in the air and maritime domain,” Arnott says. “That future threat is getting inside our development cycles.” Rather than waiting for programs of record to emerge, initiatives such as the ATS are intended to accelerate development to meet that future threat, “We got a strong signal back from the RAAF, along with other customers, and said this is something that Boeing is interested in and we are getting out in front of this,” he says.
“In addition to the demand signal from the customer, we had this unique opportunity to partner from an economic R&D standpoint with Australia,” says Robertson. “We saw an opportunity to couple those things—quantity/quality, more for less, advanced threat environment—to develop an autonomous capability for which we see a global future.”
Large and lightly populated, Australia also provides wide open spaces in which the RAAF and other interested allies can “fly, test and fail . . . and get this exciting kind of quick learning” as they use the ATS prototype to experiment with teaming concepts, Arnott says. “That becomes a real advantage for us to go fast and get to trust the product quicker, which is what autonomy is all about.
“This is an innovation program for the RAAF. It is not a capability delivery,” he says. Instead it is an experimentation program that will give customers like Australia a chance to understand the teaming concept. “This is an opportunity for them to try before they buy, but do it in a meaningful way,” he says. “For us, we are focused on the next iteration, which is getting to market and having a product that’s going to answer most of these problems that everyone is sharing.”
Flying in Australia, the ATS prototype will allow Boeing and its partners to explore the benefits of teaming an unmanned aircraft with different manned platforms. “This innovation program is built around being able to iterate and adapt rapidly, to demonstrate how this system teams and what it teams with,” Robertson says.
“So that means the ability to operate at the same airfields and run with the package it is supporting without slowing anyone else down,” she says. The level of autonomy will “depend on what the system is paired with, what it does, what the effect is, and who does what in the teaming system,” says Robertson. “Somewhere in the equation there will be a man in the loop, from a ground station or controlled from commercial derivatives or fighters. I would characterize the autonomy as actionable intelligence.”
The partnership goes beyond testing a concept. “It goes back to leveraging more of a commercial-like business model,” says Robertson. “We see demand signals around the world.” Developing the ATS commercially, in Australia, lessens the constraints on exports from U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations. “It gives us tremendous flexibility downstream to be able to market and sell and deliver globally by being able to tailor to a customer’s requirement,” agrees Robertson.
“All the engineering is being done locally. The vast majority of the suppliers are local,” says Arnott. “We took a very open approach to this, and designed and developed it based on our expertise as a global company. We are familiar with the [export] requirements . . . [and] feel we have the right controls to manage that downstream.”
By developing the ATS as a commercial offshore product, Boeing also has more flexibility to tailor its offering to export customers, offering in-country customization and “providing opportunity as it relates to their sovereign and prosperity issues,” says Robertson. “As a global company we recognize that nation-building is as much part of the development as the capabilities.”
The combination of commercial approach and local presence is not specific to Australia and could be used to create other products offshore for export, suggests Robertson. “We took a commercial approach, and the fact that we can seamlessly operate the Boeing Co. across countries and locations. We think about the flexibility in this model and being able to scale that globally.” The ATS may just be the first global military aircraft from Boeing.
