Skunk Works to Test Expendable ‘Speed Racer’ Collaborative Vehicle With Sub-$2M Price
Sept. 14, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak
Lockheed Martin will soon begin a campaign of flight tests of its “Speed Racer” uncrewed air vehicle, aiming for an expendable, modular, multipurpose vehicle that will cooperate with the F-35 and cost well below $2 million a copy, the director of the company’s Skunk Works division John Clark said Sept. 14.
Lockheed Martin has invested some $100 million in related technologies, collectively known internally as “Project Carrera,” named for the Porsche sports car, Clark said, to suggest a speedy program.
Speaking from Skunk Works’ Palmdale, Calif., headquarters on a call with defense reporters, Clark said flight testing will begin “in the near future”—tests in which the Speed Racer will be captive-carried at first; then, in later tests, released from an unnamed mothership. Clark anticipated multiple flight tests before the end of 2022. He emphasized that none of the flights will be a one-off “stunt” but instead one in a series of tests that will each demonstrate aspects of the concept, to be followed not by similar-level flights but by leaps in capability.
“It will be a … systematic build-up” of capabilities demonstrated on each test, he said.
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/skunk-works-to-test-expendable-speed-racer-collaborative-vehicle-with-sub-2m-price/
