New DARPA Stealth Drone is Designated X-plane XRQ-73

DARPA and Northrop Grumman have made a new drone with X-plane designation XRQ-73. The Series Hybrid Electric Propulsion AiRcraft Demonstration program is known as SHEPARD. SHEPARD is an X-prime program, leveraging the series hybrid electric architecture and some of the component technologies from the earlier AFRL/IARPA Great Horned Owl (GHO) project.

“The idea behind a DARPA X-prime program is to take emerging technologies and burn down system-level integration risks to quickly mature a new missionized long endurance aircraft design that can be fielded quickly,” said Steve Komadina, SHEPARD program manager. “The SHEPARD program is maturing a specific propulsion architecture and power class as an exemplar of potential benefits for the Department of Defense.”

The DARPA team, Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), the Office of Naval Research (ONR) are working together on this. The prime contractor for SHEPARD is Northrop Grumman Corporation’s Aeronautics Systems sector in Redondo Beach, CA. Scaled Composites, LLC is a major supplier, along with Cornerstone Research Group, Inc., Brayton Energy, LLC, PC Krause and Associates, and EaglePicher Technologies, LLC.

The XRQ-73 aircraft will be a Group 3 UAS weighing approximately 1,250 pounds. First flight of the XRQ-73 is expected by year-end 2024.

Group 3 drones fly at an altitude of under 18,000 feet (5,486 meters) and between 100 and 250 knots (185 to 463 kilometers/115 to 288 miles per hour).

The SHEPARD program leverages hybrid technologies and other components from the earlier Great Horned Owl (GHO) project run by the AFRL/Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity.

The GHO program was launched in 2011 and designated as the XRQ-72.

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