The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) kicked off a program seeking ways to convert existing large aircraft into drone carriers that could launch waves of unmanned aircraft a safe distance from a target to carry out a mission and then recover them—all while in flight. DARPA issued a request for information (RFI) kicking off the program November 7.
“We want to find ways to make smaller aircraft more effective, and one promising idea is enabling existing large aircraft, with minimal modification, to become ‘aircraft carriers in the sky’,” Dan Patt, program manager for DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office, said in an official statement issued by the agency.
The RFI document says that DARPA is seeking to prove “the feasibility and potential value of the ability to launch and recover volleys of small UAS [unmanned aircraft systems] from one or more existing large platforms (e.g., B-52, B-1, C-130, etc.).” The drones would carry payloads of less than 100 points and would need to be low-cost to be produced in large quantities for the sort of capability DARPA envisions.
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