A bad week...Lockheed stumbles out of the UAV gate
Polecat crashes in the Nevada desert, but at least the self-destruct mechanism works okay
A stinky situation here for Lockheed Martin. The company’s award-winning P-175 Polecat UAV crashed during December test-flights due to what Aerospace Daily & Defense Report describes as “irreversible unintential failure in the flight termination ground equipment, which caused the aircraft’s automatic fail-safe flight termination mode to activate.” This crash brings the company back to square one in its efforts to enter the UAV market. As we reported last July, “Polecat is essential to Lockheed Martin’s game plan for gaining ground in a race it appeared to have lost in the past decade to Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and General Atomics in developing first- and second-generation UAVs and UCAVs.” In addition to testing new composite airframe designs developed by Lockheed engineers, the recent tests were intended to validate the craft’s ability to fly in altitudes in excess of 60,000 feet. Unfortunately, it never even made it to 15,000.
