Future remotely piloted aircraft, like the Air Force’s MQ-X concept, not only need to have jam-resistant signals, authentication, and inscription capabilities, they also must possess additional features to operate in contested airspace that today’s MQ-9 Reapers and MQ-1 Predators lack, said Col. James Gear, head of USAF’s RPA task force. “MQ-X is still a very important capability and it’s a requirement that continues to work,” said Gear Wednesday at the AUVSI symposium in Washington, D.C. MQ-X also needs to have robust and agile communications, be weather tolerant, and be modular and upgradeable, with mission sets for intelligence-reconnaissance-surveillance and strike, he said. (For more on MQ-X, see The RPA Boom from Air Force Magazine’s 2010 archives)
A little more than two months into his new job as the Air Force’s program executive officer overseeing acquisition for the service’s ambitious Advanced Battle Management System, Brig. Gen. Luke C.G. Cropsey has identified three integration issues he’ll have to help solve—but is still assessing which of the many efforts…