Lockheed Martin RQ-3 DarkStar
Stealthy high-altitude endurance UAV canceled after stability and cost issues.
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The Lockheed Martin RQ-3 DarkStar, known as Tier III- during development, is a high-altitude endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) designed with stealth technology to operate within heavily defended airspace. It was fully autonomous, capable of takeoff, flight, sensor operation, data transmission, and landing without human intervention, though operators could adjust its flight plan and sensor orientation via radio or satellite relay.
Background
The RQ-3 DarkStar was developed as a stealthy counterpart to the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk, intended to penetrate heavily defended airspace where the Global Hawk could not operate. Its first flight occurred on March 29, 1996, but the second flight on April 22, 1996, ended in a crash shortly after takeoff. A modified, more stable design designated RQ-3A first flew on June 29, 1998, completing five flights before the program was canceled just prior to a planned sixth flight for airworthiness testing.
Two additional RQ-3A airframes were built but never flew. The Department of Defense terminated the program in January 1999, citing aerodynamic instability and failure to meet cost and performance objectives. Despite cancellation, a July 2003 Aviation Week and Space Technology article reported that a derivative of the RQ-3 had been used in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, though this has not been independently confirmed.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Lockheed Martin RQ-3 DarkStar (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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