LONDON—General Atomics has secured a £1.5 million ($1.9 million) contract that could lead to its Mojave short-take-off and landing uncrewed aircraft system (UAS) performing a flight from the UK’s HMS Prince of Wales aircraft carrier.
The U.S. OEM secured the single-source Project Mojave contract from the UK defense ministry to “demonstrate a threshold capability for a Short Take off and Landing Uncrewed Air Vehicle.”
Details of the contract emerged in a transparency notice issued by the department on May 20 to advise of the award’s single-source nature.
The work is expected to involve flight trials of the Mojave platform, a derivative of the company’s MQ-1C Gray Eagle platform designed for STOL operations from unprepared strips from the aircraft carrier later this year once repair work on the warship has been completed.
The trials and experiments are expected to inform the Royal Navy’s ongoing Future Maritime Aviation Force efforts, which aim to bring more UAS platforms onboard the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers to support the crewed F-35 and rotary-wing fleets operating onboard.
General Atomics began flight testing the Mojave UAS in July 2021 to prove the validity of a long-endurance UAS that is capable of either STOL operations on a surveillance mission or taking off with up to 16 Lockheed Martin AGM-114 Hellfire missiles on a strike mission.
Although produced on MQ-1C tooling, the Mojave is a different aircraft, featuring a 67% leap in payload capacity over the extended-range Gray Eagle.
The additional payload is generated by shifting propulsion to a Rolls-Royce M250 turboshaft engine, which doubles the power, and the addition of a dihedral, high-lift wing design that includes leading-edge slats and double-slotted flaps. The aircraft also features strengthened landing gear and flotation tires to operate on landing strips instead of runways.
The company said when the Mojave was unveiled that simulations suggested it could operate from carrier decks. The Mojave development aircraft was displayed on the HMS Queen Elizabeth last year when it arrived in New York for the Atlantic Future Forum.
Earlier this month, General Atomics revealed it was proposing equipping the MQ-9B platform with a folding wing developed from the Mojave platform, potentially enabling the UK’s future MQ-9B Protector fleet to be adapted for carrier operations.
