What’s going on with the Pentagon’s longest-running drama, the Navy’s Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (Uclass) program? After years of factional intrigue that made Borgia politics look like a Dick & Jane reader, the debate about Uclass specifications has been declared not over, but deferred. (How can there not be enough data to make a decision?) But instead of redoubling their lobbying, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman appear to have walked away.
In January, market analysts grilled Boeing CEO Jim McNerney about the future of the company’s St. Louis operations, which were facing the shutdown of their fighter programs. He seemed unworried—and whatever you think of Boeing/Lockheed Martin’s chances in the Long-Range Strike Bomber (LRSB) contest, neither side has a contract in hand.
Then the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings website reported that Uclass had been designated RAQ-25. Under Pentagon rules, programs don’t get designators; only vehicles do.
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A classified P-AEA program started in 2011-12. It may have involved flight demonstrations. Quite recently, Boeing won it, hence McNerney’s confidence about St Louis’s future. It’s been designated RAQ-25, indicating it has a strike capability, and as well as pathfinding for the LRSB, it takes on the MQ-X role. RAQ-25 is somewhere in that $7 billion slush fund.
Work’s comments about “capabilities that we already have” indicate he and other leaders are pushing for a joint Air Force/Navy program based on the RAQ-25. The delay in Uclass allows time for a carrier variant to be demonstrated, and competitors have deemed the battle half over.
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