The U.S. Air Force has awarded $40 million to a defense contractor to develop a drone fighter bomber. The Low-Cost Attritable Strike Unmanned Aerial System Demonstration (LCASD) will be a technology demonstrator that will take drone warfare to the next level—air-to-air warfare.

The Air Force Research Lab awarded the contract to Kratos Defense, a San Diego-based defense contractor that specializes in drones used for target practice by the U.S. military. The contract specifies a drone capable of low-altitude "nap of the earth" flying, high-altitude cruise, defensive counter-air maneuvers, offensive counter-air maneuvers, and suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses.

The drone will be capable of Mach 0.9 speeds for short periods of time, have a 1,500 nautical mile range, and be able to carry at least two GBU-39 small diameter bombs. It will feature "extreme agility" for missile avoidance. The LCASD will also be relatively inexpensive: $3 million each for the first 99, $2 million each if you buy more than 100.

Current drones are are limited to intelligence/surveillance/reconnaissance and strike duties. They're neither fast nor maneuverable, trading agility for range and loiter time. LCASD will have all four of those attributes, and in addition to those traditional roles LCASD will be capable of shooting down other aircraft, manned or unmanned.

In other words, the LCASD is an early effort towards a low-cost, unmanned F-16.

One interesting specification in the contract: the drone will be designed to be "runaway independent." Kratos's target drones are launched from rails mounted on trucks and ships at sea. After a training exercise, they pop parachutes and float back to Earth where they can be later recovered.

This opens up the possibility of small, lightweight robotic fighter bombers that don't need airfields in order to operate. Entire squadrons of LCASDs could be dispersed on the ground, in a camouflaged ready storage position, and launched on short notice to augment manned fighters. There would be no telltale landing strips dug into the ground to mark their location, making them much harder for an enemy to spot.

One thing that's missing from the LCASD's specs? Low-observability. The drone—at least the demonstrator anyway—won't be designed to be stealthy. Although useful, adding stealth to the list of the drone's requirements is a surefire way to balloon costs and development times. Maybe wait for the LCASD 2.0.

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