The Secret History of Boeing’s Killer Drone
June 7th, 2011Via: Wired:
When the pilotless, wing-shaped warplane lifted off a runway at California’s Edwards Air Force Base for the first time on the morning of April 27, it was like the resurrection of the dead. The Boeing Phantom Ray — one of the most advanced drones ever built — came close to never flying at all.
In late 2007, according to company insiders, U.S. military officials ordered Boeing to destroy an earlier version of the Phantom Ray, the X-45C. Exactly why the feds wanted the robotic aircraft dismantled has never been fully explained.
Boeing had just lost out to rival aerospace firm Northrop Grumman in a contest to develop a so-called “Unmanned Combat Air System” for the Navy, capable of taking off from, and landing on, aircraft carriers. That contest, known by its acronym N-UCAS — “N” for “Navy” — was actually the third time in five years Boeing had gone toe-to-toe with Northrop over a government contract to build killer drones, and the second time it had lost.
With each round of competition, Boeing had made enemies.
Even so, the kill order came as a shock to the Chicago-based company. Rare if not unprecedented in the world of military contracting, the command represented the climax of a nearly decade-long drama pitting a rotating field of corporations and government agencies against each other and, bizarrely, even against themselves — all in an effort to develop a controversial, but potentially revolutionary, pilotless jet fighter.
The UCAS development story has all the trappings of a paperback technothriller: secret technology, a brilliant military scientist, scheming businessmen, and the unseen-but-decisive hand of the military’s top brass.
