Dubbed Gambit 5 by the company, the new variant leverages from an existing common technology ‘core’ but introduces a strengthened airframe and landing gear to cope with the stresses of assisted launch/arrested recovery, plus integration of a precision landing system. The concept was displayed at last month’s Farnborough international airshow (FIA 2024) event.
Revealed by GA-ASI back in March 2022, Gambit is a suite of high-performance autonomous combat aircraft based on a common ‘chassis’ known as the ‘Gambit Core’. Tailored variants – differentiated by their airframe, wing type, powerplant, signature characteristics, sensor fit and/or weapon payload – leverage from this core to address specific mission sets. This approach implements the ‘genus/species’ concept first developed by the company with the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) as part of the Low-Cost Attritable Aircraft Platform Sharing program, and subsequently implemented in US programmes including the XQ-67A Off-Board Sensing Station and the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA).
“You have the chassis, the landing gear, flight control avionics and so on embedded inside a core module,” C. Mark Brinkley, GA-ASI’s senior director for strategic communications and marketing, told Naval News at FIA 2024. “The idea is then to be able to rapidly prototype around that core module for different missions.”
GA-ASI has previously outlined four notional ‘missionised’ Gambit variants: an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platform (Gambit 1); an air-to-air weapons carrier (Gambit 2); a high-fideilty target vehicle for adversary training (Gambit 3); and a low-observable, long endurance penetrating ISR asset (Gambit 4). Each aircraft variant achieves around 70% commonality through the embodiment of the universal core chassis.
Gambit 5 is now looking at how the core chassis concept can be adapted for carrier operations, said Brinkley. “We have shown graphics here [at FIA 2024] depicting a variant based on Gambit 2 – which is the air-to-air version – but it doesn’t necessarily have to be weaponised. So it could actually be a carrier-capable ISR version.”
He continued: “We see a number of nations who are interested in extending the Collaborative Combat Aircraft or Autonomous Collaborative Platform concept into their ships. So we know that this carrier-launched version is something that is generating interest.”
GA-ASI’s experience in jet-powered unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs) goes back to 2009 when the company began flying the MQ-20 Avenger . “We’ve been flying [Avenger] for 15 years,” said Brinkley. “The whole concept behind our Gambit series is to be able to rapidly iterate based off of the successes that we’re already seeing [and] noting that we’ve already achieved 37,000 hours on the MQ-20 platform.”
Gambit 5 also folds in experience from GA-ASI’s earlier pursuits of the US Navy’s abortive Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) programme and the follow-on MQ-25 Stingray carrier-capable airborne refueller. According to Brinkley, the company’s participation in the UCLASS and MQ-25 competitions has given it deep insight into carrier-based, jet-powered UCAV operations,
“There’s a lot that has to go into making the Gambit 5 carrier-capable [in terms of] the catapult launch and arrested landing. How do you reinforce the landing gear? How do you add the tail hook? How do you ‘marinise’ the airframe? All those considerations come into play.
“[But] we’ve been reinforcing aircraft to take off and land on aircraft carrier for a very long time. There’s no specifically new science to that.”
GA-ASI had already worked with its sister General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems business to examine launch and recovery solutions. “They have been working EMALS [Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System] and AAG [Advanced Arrestor Gear] for the US Navy, and now also the French Navy,” Brinkley said. “It’s not the exact same system, but it is the same underpinning technology scaled for an expeditionary [installation]. So the idea is that you have electromagnetic launch and recovery coupled with a carrier-capable CCA to effectively turn these platforms into drone carriers.
“And operating in concert with the MQ-9B STOL [short takeoff/landing] aircraft, you are really effecting a transformation. We think there is a lot of future in this concept, and we are already seeing interest in the US, the UK, Australia and Japan on how they might work on this concept together. We’re beginning to explore what international [carrier-capable ACP] cooperation might look like.”
C. Mark Brinkley, GA-ASI’s senior director for strategic communications and marketing
At this stage, GA-ASI has no firm plans to build a Gambit 5 prototype. “I think there’s a view among the engineers that the work that we’re already involved in – for the Air Force Research Laboratory for example – is so highly adaptable that the modular system that we will build and design means that we’re not reinventing the wheel to move to this type of platform,” said Brinkley. “We’ve also done lots of work on relative navigation, and also integrated different levels of autonomy. We’ve been involved in the [AFRL’s] Skyborg programme, the DARPA CODE pilot, and we have our own in-house autonomy pilot.
“So we don’t have a carrier version sitting on the runway yet for people to fly,” he added. “Right now it’s more than theory, less than prototype.”
