Lockheed Martin to build five Vectis combat drone prototypes

Lockheed Martin has widened its Vectis collaborative combat aircraft plans to a fleet of five prototypes. Assembly of the first aircraft is under way, and Ron Fehlen, general manager of the Skunk Works unit overseeing the programme, says it remains on schedule to fly by the end of 2027.

Vectis is an uncrewed tactical jet pitched at the upper end of that emerging market. Lockheed calls the design survivable and affordable. According to Fehlen, it sits in the Group 5 category of unmanned aircraft systems, measuring 10.3m (34ft) long with an 11.5m wingspan.

Factory photographs released by Skunk Works show the upper fuselage skin and wing surface of the first aircraft. Among the features visible are a recessed air intake on the upper fuselage, tailless control surfaces, an internal weapons bay and a serrated trailing edge of the kind seen on other tailless stealth aircraft. The latest renderings show the dorsal inlet more submerged than earlier images suggested.

Fehlen says the choices are intended to produce an aircraft that can survive modern air combat and still be rugged enough for the US Air Force's Agile Combat Employment concept, which spreads operations across dispersed and austere locations. An inlet on top of the airframe helps in those settings, he said, by reducing concern about foreign object debris picked up from a runway.

Lockheed also plans to display a full-scale model of the autonomous fighter at the Air & Space Forces Association conference, opening 14 September in the Washington, DC area.