RQ-3A DarkStar Tier III Minus
Source: Federation of American Scientists
The Tier III Minus UAV, known by the nickname DarkStar,
was one of two high altitude endurance UAVs being developed for the
Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office (DARO) by the Advanced Research
Projects Agency (ARPA) joint UAV program office. The Department of
Defense canceled the Dark Star UAV program in February 1999 due to
budget cuts. Given a trade-off between stealth and range, the Air
Force chose the range of Global Hawk over Darkstar’s stealth.
The Tier III Minus program is the first project to be
executed under the "Section 845 Authority" granted to ARPA for
prototype weapons development projects. This authority has paved the
way for unprecedented government-industry collaboration by removing
the burden of specialized Defense procurement regulations and
statutes. The Tier Three Dark Star came with a one page specification
that simply specified best altitude, endurance, and signature for a
$10M (94$) unit cost for units 11-20.
At a planned $10 million a copy (FY94 dollars), the
DarkStar UAV was intended to provide affordable, near real time,
continuous, all weather, wide area surveillance in support of tactical
commanders. The result would be timely information that the tactical
commander can immediately exploit for accurate situational awareness
and to perform precision strikes and other high priority intelligence
and reconnaissance tasks.
The DarkStar system is a high-altitude, endurance
unmanned air vehicle optimized for reconnaissance in highly defended
areas. Physically, it is a little over half the span and a third the
length of the Global Hawk aircraft. The Common Ground Segment, being
developed by Raytheon/E-Systems, combines mission planning, command
and control, communications and imagery quality control for both
systems into a transportable system housed in two ruggedized shelters.
Optimized for low observables, DarkStar’s operational goal is to be
highly survivable while penetrating high threat environments.
Complementing the Tier III Minus is the Tier II Plus, which will be
optimized for long range and endurance in a low-to-moderate threat
environment. Both vehicles will be capable of fully autonomous
take-off, flight and recovery; be capable of dynamic retasking while
in flight.
It will operate within the current military force
structure, and with existing command, control, communications,
computer and intelligence equipment. It can operate at a range of 500
nautical miles from the launch site and will be able to loiter over
the target area longer that eight hours at an altitude of more than
45,000 feet, carrying either an electro-optical or synthetic aperture
radar sensor payload.
The DarkStar offers a 1,000-pound payload and carries
either a low probability of intercept (LPI) SAR or EO sensor, one at a
time, and offers similar collection rates and imagery resolution,
though its capacity per mission is less due to its reduced endurance.
Northrop Grumman Electric Sensors and Systems is developing the
DarkStar SAR and Recon [reconnaissance] Optical is developing the EO
sensor. The common ground station will disseminate the imagery product
from the two air vehicles to existing exploitation systems.
The sensor system is similar to the Global Hawk, except
there is less bandwidth in terms of the communications links because
of the low observable installation of the antennas. In addition
DarkStar carries either the radar or the EO payload on this aircraft,
whereas Global Hawk can carry both payloads simultaneously. The radar
payload has the same capability as the Global Hawk radar, with the
exception of not having a GMTI mode. The EO system is a little bit
degraded in terms of the NIIRS it can provide, but per hour it
provides the same level of area coverage capability or the same number
of spots per hour as provided with the Global Hawk system.
When DarkStar missions are allocated to Army commanders,
or an Army officer is the JTF commander, the Enhanced Tactical Radar
Correlator (ETRAC) and Modernized Imagery Exploitation System (MIES)
(or successor processors) will process the imagery. If the U.S. Air
Force is the "lead" Service, the processor would be the Contingency
Airborne Reconnaissance System (CARS); if the Navy and Marines go in
first, the Joint Services Imagery Processing System-Navy (JSIPS-N)
would process the imagery. The Common Ground Station (CGS) will
display the imagery no matter which system processed it.
A Lockheed/Boeing team is leading the development of the
Tier III Minus (DarkStar) system. Each company is responsible for
approximately 50 percent of the development program. Boeing Military
Aircraft Division, Seattle, WA is responsible for the wing and wing
subsystem development and testing, and Lockheed Martin Skunk Works,
Palmdale, CA is responsible for the design and development of the body
and its subsystems, final assembly, integration and system test. A
single turbo-fan engine, supplied by Williams International, provides
power for the vehicle.
The planned first flight of DarkStar occurred in March
1996; however, a second flight in April 1996 crashed due to incorrect
aerodynamic modeling of the vehicles flight control laws. On 22
December 1996 Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology
Paul G. Kaminski approved the revised DarkStar High Altitude Endurance
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle program plan. The revised program plan is a
result of an independent review of the program following the crash of
the first DarkStar air vehicle in April 1996. The review was conducted
by an independent group of leading experts from government, industry
and academia, and provided a detailed assessment of the entire
DarkStar system and the program’s processes and procedures. The review
concluded that: (1) the contractor team understands the cause of the
accident, (2) the DarkStar simulation now matches the data from the
first and second test flights, and (3) the processes and procedures
used in software development and test and system test have been
significantly improved.
http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/darkstar.htm