Kratos Defense successful tests a part of “last” military technology
Kratos Defense & Security Solutions (KTOS, NASDAQ) are participating in the testing of innovation strike reconnaissance unmanned air platform. At the final similar developments will concentrate all military power in one hand. At that Kratos could became a huge producer of expensive military equipment.
This refers to DARPA’s program X-61A Gremlins Air Vehicle (GAV) wherein Kratos is the subcontractor, produces and assemble bodies of UAVs. General contractor is Dynetics (subsidiary of Leidos Holdings, Inc.
X-61A is big jet UAV that is capable to be deployed from army transport planes such C-130 and C-17 or from wing pylon of any large plane. X-61A GAV can carry various payloads such as surveillance equipment, jammers, warheads, etc.
The GAV deployment concept is intended a deployment from transport planes then perform a task, landing with parachute and refurbish for next launch within 24 hours. Also X-61A Gremlins Air Vehicle provides the possibility of docking with carrier plane by special system. So, after mission GAV could return into a carrier plane.
On January 2020 during a polygon test X-61A was dropped from C-130, than was flying almost two hours under F-35’s pilot control. Landing was unsuccessful caused by parachute failure but this problem probably isn’t serious and Dynetics has another four UAVs. In a new test flight all those UAVs have to docking with С-130 no more than half an hour.
In future wings of UAVs like X-61A and bigger Kratos XQ-58A Valkyrie will be main crushing power. The motion to this goal is in the DoD’s budget on FY2020. It is important to understand that a human factor in the command and control of the United States Army will continue to decline.
In the final count one person or small decision-maker group could be capable to start huge military operation from “laptop” without discussions and planning at the headquarters. Companies that provide this movement can get orders for continuous production of the huge amount of military robots.
