Everything We Learned From Boeing About Its Potentially Game-Changing Loyal Wingman Drone
The stealthy Airpower Teaming System drone has a snap-on nose that can accommodate a huge variety of payloads and can be swapped quickly in the field.
By Tyler RogowayMay 4, 2020
The War Zone
In what is a massive milestone for Boeing and potentially for unmanned aerial combat systems as a whole, the company officially rolled out the first of three pre-production unmanned teaming aircraft, which is the central component of a total system called the Airpower Teaming System, or ATS for short. The War Zone was part of a small roundtable of journalists that talked with two of the minds behind ATS ahead of the official unveiling and we learned a lot about this potentially game-changing system, to say the least.
ATS is designed to work with manned aerial assets in the 'loyal wingman' role and to do so at a remarkably low cost. In effect, the concept has to potential to drastically expand the size of a tactical jet force at a fraction of the cost of buying full-up manned airframes, while also infusing a whole new set of disruptive tactics into an air arm's playbook. It will also make manned assets more survivable by not having to risk them during the direst parts of some missions. You can read more about this concept overall, here.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33271/everything-we-learned-from-boeing-about-its-potentially-game-changing-loyal-wingman-drone
