DARPA Flies XRQ-73 Hybrid-Electric Reconnaissance Drone
DARPA has completed the first flight of its experimental XRQ-73 reconnaissance drone in California. The April flight took place at Edwards Air Force Base with the Air Force Research Laboratory and prime contractor Northrop Grumman.
The aircraft is being developed under DARPA’s Series Hybrid Electric Propulsion AiRcraft Demonstration program, known as SHEPARD. The effort is designed to prove hybrid-electric propulsion technologies that could improve fuel efficiency and reduce noise signatures for future autonomous military aircraft.
The XRQ-73 is a lightweight Group 3 unmanned aircraft and an X-plane built to test a series hybrid-electric architecture. The system converts conventional fuel into electric power to drive the aircraft, offering a potential path to quieter and more efficient propulsion for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions; DARPA said the first flight validates an architecture that could support new mission systems and delivered effects, while Northrop Grumman said the propulsion approach combines fuel efficiency, reduced emissions and greater operational flexibility.
The SHEPARD program builds on earlier work from the Great Horned Owl project, an Air Force Research Laboratory effort with the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity that sought to reduce acoustic signatures for ISR drones without giving up endurance or payload capacity. DARPA said the XRQ-73 is larger than the earlier XRQ-72 but uses the same hybrid-electric architecture and related component technologies, while carrying an operationally representative fuel fraction and mission systems below the Group 3 weight limit; the test campaign could give the U.S. military new options for quieter, longer-endurance autonomous aircraft.