Boeing announced Thursday that it will pursue technologies that enable multiple small, remotely piloted aircraft to coordinate their activities with each other and with a manned airborne control station. The Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, has awarded the company a three-year, $10 million contract for this work under an initiative called “Foxhunt.” The goal is to allow these RPA to carry out intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance missions more safely and effectively. “The focus of the Foxhunt program is the airborne control of a varied mix of unmanned aerial vehicles,” explained Boeing’s Patrick Stokes. He said this is actually part of AFRL’s “grander vision” of having airborne “motherships” launch, command, and then recover these small RPA.
A three-month continuing resolution that ended in December inflicted less pain on the Department of the Air Force than it had expected, as procurement and construction continue in the new year. The federal government operated under a stopgap spending measure that stretched from the beginning of the fiscal year on…