Military Officer - January 2008 - (Page 60) An Unmanned Ground Combat Vehicle (UGCV) (top, the Spinner in Pittsburgh; left, the Retarius in Albuquerque, N.M.) is just one project managed by the TTO. The Crusher UGCV (above) integrates robotic perception tools for more autonomy. With a cruising speed of 400 mph and a range of a thousand nautical miles, the heliplane will be employed for combat search-and-rescue operations and eventually could find its way into commercial aviation. The flying wing concept has been around for decades, most notably seen in Northrup’s XB-35 and YB-49 aircraft and the modern B-2 stealth bomber. TTO’s latest incarnation, the Oblique Flying Wing (OFW), aims to produce a supersonic, variable-wing, tailless aircraft that can cruise at speeds of Mach 1.2. The revolutionary part: The OFW will be able to fly with its wing swept sideways, one wing60 MILITARY OFFICER JANUARY 2008 tip forward and the other back at an angle of up to 65 degrees, improving range, response time, and endurance. At lower speeds, the wing will change to an unswept configuration. “Such an asymmetric platform has inherently less drag than symmetrically swept wings, allowing more efficient supersonic flight and promising efficient subsonic operations and reducing dependence on in-flight refueling,” explains TTO program manager Thomas Bussing. Empowering the warfighter Unmanned vehicles have proven invaluable under combat conditions, reliably transmitting real-time intelligence information to operators on the ground. However, those receiving the data often are physically in the U.S., and the information must be relayed to battlefield commanders. DARPA and TTO are working on ways to bring those assets directly to commanders at the company level, and the Organic Air Vehicle (OAV) is one route to that goal. The OAV is a vertical-takeoff platform with a low acoustical signature that will provide immediate intelligence, surveillance, and targeting information to commanders in the field. Rather than send a team of servicePHOTOS: COURTESY DARPA
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