CHAPTER 3

Military and Space Experimental Drones

The United States, Great Britain, China, Israel, and many other countries use military drones. Military drones help keep members of the armed forces out of harm’s way. Many militaries partner with manufacturers to design and test drones. If testing goes well, the militaries may buy the drones. Some drone manufacturers also sell drones directly to militaries.

Weaving Around Obstacles

In January 2016 the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) completed its first flight test on a drone. The small, lightweight drone is about the size of a seagull. It carries a camera, sonar, and lidar. This equipment helps the drone fly into destroyed buildings filled with debris without crashing. It can travel 45 miles (72 kilometers) per hour while weaving in and out of obstacles. The U.S. military would like to someday use this drone to search inside unstable buildings to help keep soldiers safe.

The DARPA drone’s small size would allow it to fit through windows.

SR-72

Skunk Works is the advanced development program of aircraft manufacturer Lockheed Martin. Skunk Works built aircraft such as the U.S. military SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. The SR-71 was the fastest plane to have ever flown. All Skunk Works programs are important to national security, and they are secret. But future Skunk Works drones are likely to have more stealth technology.

an artist’s drawing of the SR-72

The Skunk Works SR-72 Blackbird drone is planned to be finished in 2030. Lockheed plans for the drone to fly more than 4,000 miles (6,437 km) per hour. This is six times the speed of sound! Developers want it to fly undetected, take photos, and get to any location on Earth in about an hour.

Taranis

Aircraft manufacturer BAE Systems built the Taranis for the British armed forces in 2010. Since then, it has completed several successful tests. The stealth drone is meant to be invisible to radar. The drone can travel more than 700 miles (1,127 km) per hour. The British military plans to use the test results to develop future drones and fighter planes. Some experts consider it the most advanced aircraft ever made in Great Britain.

Divine Eagle

The Chinese government has recently increased its military spending. The Divine Eagle is a large prototype drone. It is meant to defend China’s airspace and hunt enemy aircraft carriers in oceans. It has several radars to help find enemy aircraft, ships, or ground targets. The radars can detect objects on any side of the drone.

A Top-Secret Space Plane

For the Boeing X-37B space drone, the skies are not the limit. The X-37B rides a rocket all the way to space. It is a joint project between NASA and the U.S. Air Force. The unmanned spacecraft is 29 feet (8.8 m) long and has a wingspan of 15 feet (4.6 m). Once in orbit, the X-37B flies on a preset flight path. Since its missions are top secret, little information about what the drone does is made public. Air Force officials say it is used to develop reusable spacecraft technologies and to conduct experiments.

The X-37B taxis at the Astrotech space operations facility in Florida in 2010.

A FUTURE HELPER FOR ASTRONAUTS

What might be the easiest way to get a snack aboard the International Space Station (ISS) someday? Send the drone! The ArachnoBeeA drone is designed to navigate inside the ISS. It is like a combination of an aerial drone and a ground robot. The drone can fly around the space station and bring items to astronauts. It also has limbs so that it can attach itself to the walls of the ISS and crawl from place to place. It has a mechanical arm that it uses to grab objects while crawling.

FACT

On its first launch in 2010, the X-37B became the first U.S. spacecraft to land on a runway under its own control.

A Drone Barge

Space rockets require an enormous amount of energy to get into space. They have powerful engines and carry a lot of fuel. Rockets are made up of stages called boosters. Each booster is a separate part of the rocket. After the rocket is launched, the boosters separate from the rocket. The first booster separates first. Then a specific amount of time later, the second booster separates. Both boosters usually drop into the ocean. They are only sometimes retrieved by ship crews to use again.

On April 8, 2016, a Falcon 9 rocket launched from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. But when the first booster broke off, it didn’t drop into the water. Instead it landed on a drone ship that was floating in the Atlantic Ocean.

The drone ship’s name is Of Course I Still Love You. The huge drone is a little smaller than a football field. It is 300 feet (91 m) long and 170 feet (52 m) wide. Operators can control the barge with remote control to get it in the location needed to catch the booster. Its guidance system can also be preset.

A rocket stage lands successfully onto Of Course I Still Love You in 2016.

FACT

The barge Of Course I Still Love You is named after a ship in Iain M. Banks’ science fiction book The Player of Games.