DARPA Wants Airborne Aircraft Carriers
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DARPA’s vision for a flying aircraft carrier involves a larger manned aircraft to carry, launch, and recover multiple small drones. Specifically, DARPA is requesting information on “concept feasibility, unique and enabling platform technologies, system architectures, concepts of operation, modeling and simulation, potential demonstration platforms and approaches, and reusable low-cost delivery vehicle (UAS) platform concepts.”
While earlier airships and cinematic helicarriers were gigantic, sky-filling behemoths, DARPA’s approach and requests suggest something smaller, designed less for winning aerial battles and more for placing surveillance craft over relatively safe skies. Their concept art features a cargo aircraft similar to the military’s workhouse C-130 releasing a series of drones that, while similar in outline to existing Predator and Reaper drones, are deliberately generic.
http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/darpa-wants-airborne-aircraft-carriers