MOSCOW. June 17 (Interfax-AVN) - The Pentagon is going to deploy a fleet of combat unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) by 2010, think Russian experts.
By 2010, the U.S. Navy will have started, and the U.S. Air Force will have completed the deployment of combat UAV, Vyacheslav Volodin and Alfiya Mukhametzhanova, experts with the State R&D Institute of Aircraft Systems, wrote in the article published in the recent issue of the Air Fleet Herald magazine.
According to them, major solutions of combat UAVs for the U.S. Navy and Air Force will have been found by 2005, as well as performance specifications.
After reforming general plans on development of UAV, the J- UCAS program was entrusted to the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Project Agency. Before that, the UAV development for the Navy and the Air Force was carried out under separate programs.
Among the contractors under the program are Boeing and Northrop Grumman with X-45C/X-46 and X-47 UAVs.
Similar work is underway in Western Europe, where UAVs are expected to come in service only after 2020 to replace the existing aircraft, the authors say.