Kratos ratos has released a rendering offering the first look at a version of its stealthy XQ-58A Valkyrie drone with built-in landing gear.
The company first announced that this new version, which might present certain advantages over the original runway-independent design, was in the works last year.A social media post from Kratos official X account included the rendering of the tricycle landing gear-equipped XQ-58, seen at the top of this story.
This is the third launch and recovery method the company has developed for the Valkyrie and follows the unveiling of a special launch trolley last year that allows existing versions to take off from traditional runways.The uncrewed aircraft was originally designed for completely runway-independent operation, using expendable rocket boosters to get into the air via ground-based launchers and a parachute recovery system to get back down after a sortie.
The company has also shown a concept for a containerized launch system in the past.A conventional take-off and landing (CTOL), also referred to as horizontal take-off and landing (HTOL), is the method by which fixed-wing aircraft take off and land using runways, Kratos post on X about the new XQ-58 with landing gear also reads.
Being runway flexible/runway independent delivers maximum operational utility to the warfighter.The rendering shows the single wheel nose and main landing gear units.
The nose gear appears to be designed to retract forward into a bay covered by two trapezoidal-shaped doors, while the two main gear units retract into bays on either side of the fuselage that are each covered by a single door.As depicted, the overall design of the CTOL/HTOL version of the XQ-58 otherwise looks largely unchanged from the standard type.
Kratos has not yet released more specific details about how the new configuration differs from the runway-independent one, especially when it comes to its gross and maximum takeoff weights, speed, and endurance.When asked for more information about how the CTOL/HTOL differs from existing XQ-58 variants, Kratos told TWZ that it could not currently provide any additional details.
Runway-independent versions of the drone could technically be converted into landing gear-equipped ones, but the intent is that there are multiple Valkyrie configurations to support different mission requirements, a company representative said.Youll be able to do a conventional takeoff and land with retractable gear, Steve Fendley, president of the Unmanned Systems Division at Kratos, toldAviation Week, according to a recent report from that outlet.
You give up a proportion of your payload volume of your internal payload, but you can still maintain all the external.At the same time, a runway-independent configuration can present limits on maximum takeoff weight, which, in turn, have impacts on range and payload capacity.
Kratos previously toldThe War Zonethat the launch trolley configuration offers an increase that is in the 10s of % for both fuel and payload capacity and enables quite an advantage for amount of payload and range / endurance of the system.Source: The War Zone