E-Systems | |||
XQM-93 #
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Photo:
Robert Deering 7/21/2018 Frontiers of Flight Museum Love Field (DAL) Dallas, Texas |
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The Ling-Temco-Vought XQM-93 was a remotely
piloted aircraft developed in the United States in the
late 1960s and early 1970s for use as a communications
relay in the Vietnam War. A prototype flew in 1970, but
the program was abandoned without producing a
service-ready aircraft. In the late 1960s, following the
early microwave HALE (High Altitude Long Endurance)
vehicle studies, the US Air Force worked with LTV
Electrosystems (later E-Systems) under
the Compass Dwell program to build an unmanned aerial
vehicle (UAV) using much more conventional turboprop
propulsion. At least part of the motivation or
inspiration for this effort was derived from the Igloo
White program, which was a multiservice attempt to cut
the flow of supplies from North Vietnam to South Vietnam
through the network of paths and roads running through
Cambodia and Laos known as the "Ho Chi Minh Trail". Igloo White involved seeding the
region with thousands of seismic and acoustic sensors,
most of them air-dropped, which would pick up
indications of traffic along the trail and report them
back to a central command center in Thailand, which
would dispatch air strikes in response. The sensors were
battery-operated and had limited range, so airborne
radio relay aircraft orbited above the battle area to
pick up the signals and pass them on to the command
center. Originally, the radio relays
were Lockheed EC-121 Warning Star aircraft, a military
variant of the Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation four
piston engined aircraft, but these machines were
expensive to operate. They were replaced by Beech
Debonaire single-engine light aircraft, modified for the
radio relay role and given the military designation of
QU-22A. They could be operated as drones, but apparently
nobody trusted that as operational practice, and they
were never flown unpiloted except as experiments. LTV Electrosystems' development
effort focused on an endurance aircraft that could be
flown as a piloted aircraft or a UAV. A number of
prototypes, including piloted and UAV versions, were
built and flown. They were based on a Schweizer SGS
2-32 sailplane design with major modifications by Schweizer to
accommodate a Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-34 turboprop
engine, large fuel tanks, and operational payloads. The
aircraft had fixed tricycle landing gear. The first prototype, designated
the L-450F, was piloted. It first flew in
February 1970, but was lost in an accident on its third
flight in March 1970, the pilot bailing out safely. A
second L-450F was built and used to complete the flight
test program. The third prototype, the first UAV
variant, was designated the XQM-93 and flew in
early 1972. It had no cockpit or other provisions for
piloted flight. It could carry a payload of 320
kilograms (700 pounds). The Air Force ordered four
XQM-93s but it is unclear if they were actually
delivered, since Compass Dwell was cancelled that year. Source: Wikipedia |