UK to Work On Unmanned Fighter Jet

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The United Kingdom’s Defense Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) has announced plans to work with the UK’s Royal Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office to develop a new Unmanned Combat Aircraft.

The plan is to develop a relatively lightweight UAV that will be deployed alongside fighter jets such as the F-35. The Lightweight Affordable Novel Combat Aircraft (LANCA) will offer capabilities that lead to increased protection, intelligence, and survivability to the manned fighter jet. With hopes that one day that the LANCA will form its own entirely unmanned combat air fleet.

The LANCA project first originated in 2015 in the form of studies to assess air combat technologies that could reduce costs and development time.

Eandt.theiet.org mentions that as part of the LANCA project, a technology demonstrator project named Mosquito has awarded contracts to teams led by Blue Bear, Boeing, and Callen-Lenz. The contracts have been awarded for the first phase of work which will last 12 months and involve producing initial system designs for the LANCA UAV. The first phase of Project Mosquito will also involve assessing cost trade offs and areas of risk. It will also explore methods of design, development, manufacturing, and support that enable a more efficient development of UAV systems.

The second and last stage of the Mosquito project will involve the use of two designs for further development and manufacturing. The first test flight of the demonstrator drone will likely take place in 2022.

The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense has recently also announced that it would invest 10 million pounds on a contract to develop hypersonic propulsion systems. This could potentially enable UK fighter jets, and possibly the LANCA, to travel through the air at over five times the speed of sound.