DARPA’s Stealthy “LongShot” Drone Will Fire Air-to-Air Missiles

By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

The Pentagon envisions a potential scenario wherein large swarms of stealthy, armed air-launched attack drones might encircle an enemy area, destroy enemy air defenses, form a protective wall for manned aircraft or simply blanket an area with forward reconnaissance to identify targets in dangerous airspace. These kinds of Concepts of Operation continue to inform the Pentagon’s much discussed “Replicator” effort to acquire large numbers of coordinated drone fleets.

Early renderings of DARPA’s LongShot attack drone show what looks like a stealthy platform, and General Atomics has begun flight testing its LongShot Drone though its deal with DARPA to develop a stealthy armed air-to-air-combat capable drone. The concept is to launch the drone from a manned fighter and potentially even operate the drones in groups or swarms to blanket an area with protection or offensive firepower.

The DARPA effort, which naturally aims to bring ground-breaking attack possibilities to the Air Force, initially awarded developmental deals to Lockheed Martin, General Atomics, and Northrop Grumman. Now the Pentagon has solely awarded a developmental deal to General Atomics. Early design work has been underway. Perhaps U.S. efforts with the arm
ed, stealthy LongShot attack drone are well ahead of China’s GJ-11?

At first glance, China’s effort to deploy a stealthy armed attack drone may seem extremely cutting edge or novel, yet there is indeed a lot of precedent for this kind of platform. Stealthy drones and armed drones have now existed for many years, but a combined drone that is both armed and stealthy is much more rare.

However, the U.S. actually developed plans for an armed stealthy drone capable of taking off from the deck of an aircraft carrier.

Armed, Carrier-Launched Stealthy Drone: UCLASS 

The existence of the Chinese GJ-11 appears to mirror the configuration and possible mission scope of a former U.S. Navy program to deploy a first-of-its-kind armed, carrier-launched stealthy drone called UCLASS, for Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike program. 

The aircraft, which evolved out of a multi-year developmental effort to build the X-47B demonstrator, was a pioneering breakthrough platform to build and operate a never-before-seen stealthy carrier attack drone.