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from https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2024/08/general-atomics-reveals-new-carrier-capable-drone/

Gambit 5 has been conceptualised as a carrier-capable autonomous combat aircraft founded on the common Gambit Core ‘chassis’. (GA-ASI photo)

General Atomics Reveals New Carrier-Capable Drone
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc (GA-ASI) has unveiled a concept
for a carrier-capable variant of its Gambit autonomous collaborative
platform (ACP).
Naval News Staff 07 Aug 2024

Dubbed Gambit 5 by the company, the new variant leverages from an
existing common technology ‘core’ but introduces a strengthened airframe and landing gear to cope with the stresses of assisted launch/arrested recovery, plus integration of a precision landing system. The concept
was displayed at last month’s Farnborough international airshow (FIA
2024) event.

Revealed by GA-ASI back in March 2022, Gambit is a suite of
high-performance autonomous combat aircraft based on a common ‘chassis’ known as the ‘Gambit Core’. Tailored variants – differentiated by their airframe, wing type, powerplant, signature characteristics, sensor fit
and/or weapon payload – leverage from this core to address specific
mission sets. This approach implements the ‘genus/species’ concept first developed by the company with the US Air Force Research Laboratory
(AFRL) as part of the Low-Cost Attritable Aircraft Platform Sharing
program, and subsequently implemented in US programmes including the
XQ-67A Off-Board Sensing Station and the Collaborative Combat Aircraft
(CCA).

“You have the chassis, the landing gear, flight control avionics and so
on embedded inside a core module,” C. Mark Brinkley, GA-ASI’s senior director for strategic communications and marketing, told Naval News at
FIA 2024. “The idea is then to be able to rapidly prototype around that
core module for different missions.”

GA-ASI has previously outlined four notional ‘missionised’ Gambit
variants: an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR)
platform (Gambit 1); an air-to-air weapons carrier (Gambit 2); a
high-fideilty target vehicle for adversary training (Gambit 3); and a low-observable, long endurance penetrating ISR asset (Gambit 4). Each
aircraft variant achieves around 70% commonality through the embodiment
of the universal core chassis.

Gambit 5 is now looking at how the core chassis concept can be adapted
for carrier operations, said Brinkley. “We have shown graphics here [at
FIA 2024] depicting a variant based on Gambit 2 – which is the
air-to-air version – but it doesn’t necessarily have to be weaponised.
So it could actually be a carrier-capable ISR version.”

He continued: “We see a number of nations who are interested in
extending the Collaborative Combat Aircraft or Autonomous Collaborative Platform concept into their ships. So we know that this carrier-launched version is something that is generating interest.”

GA-ASI’s experience in jet-powered unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs)
goes back to 2009 when the company began flying the MQ-20 Avenger .
“We’ve been flying [Avenger] for 15 years,” said Brinkley. “The whole concept behind our Gambit series is to be able to rapidly iterate based
off of the successes that we’re already seeing [and] noting that we’ve already achieved 37,000 hours on the MQ-20 platform.”

Gambit 5 also folds in experience from GA-ASI’s earlier pursuits of the
US Navy’s abortive Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and
Strike (UCLASS) programme and the follow-on MQ-25 Stingray
carrier-capable airborne refueller. According to Brinkley, the
company’s participation in the UCLASS and MQ-25 competitions has given
it deep insight into carrier-based, jet-powered UCAV operations,

“There’s a lot that has to go into making the Gambit 5 carrier-capable
[in terms of] the catapult launch and arrested landing. How do you
reinforce the landing gear? How do you add the tail hook? How do you ‘marinise’ the airframe? All those considerations come into play.

“[But] we’ve been reinforcing aircraft to take off and land on aircraft carrier for a very long time. There’s no specifically new science to that.”

GA-ASI had already worked with its sister General Atomics
Electromagnetic Systems business to examine launch and recovery
solutions. “They have been working EMALS [Electromagnetic Aircraft
Launch System] and AAG [Advanced Arrestor Gear] for the US Navy, and now
also the French Navy,” Brinkley said. “It’s not the exact same system, but it is the same underpinning technology scaled for an expeditionary [installation]. So the idea is that you have electromagnetic launch and recovery coupled with a carrier-capable CCA to effectively turn these
platforms into drone carriers.

“And operating in concert with the MQ-9B STOL [short takeoff/landing] aircraft, you are really effecting a transformation. We think there is a
lot of future in this concept, and we are already seeing interest in the
US, the UK, Australia and Japan on how they might work on this concept together. We’re beginning to explore what international [carrier-capable
ACP] cooperation might look like.”


C. Mark Brinkley, GA-ASI’s senior director for strategic communications
and marketing
At this stage, GA-ASI has no firm plans to build a Gambit 5 prototype.
“I think there’s a view among the engineers that the work that we’re already involved in – for the Air Force Research Laboratory for example
– is so highly adaptable that the modular system that we will build and design means that we’re not reinventing the wheel to move to this type
of platform,” said Brinkley. “We’ve also done lots of work on relative navigation, and also integrated different levels of autonomy. We’ve been involved in the [AFRL’s] Skyborg programme, the DARPA CODE pilot, and we
have our own in-house autonomy pilot.

“So we don’t have a carrier version sitting on the runway yet for people
to fly,” he added. “Right now it’s more than theory, less than prototype.”

TAGS Aircraft Carrier General Atomics UAV
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Posted by : Naval News Staff
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