General Atomics company’s expeditionary short take-off and landing (STOL) UCAV Mojave performed its first landing and take-off operation from Royal Navy’s HMS Prince of Wales. The company that produced the MQ-9 Reaper and MQ-1C Gray Eagle-Extended Range (GE-ER) recently designed a UCAV to land and take off short distances and from semi-improved fields.
Mojave can take off and land from remote semi-improved surfaces under pilot control via a traditional ground control station or scalable command and control laptop solution. The UCAV may carry 16 AGM-114 Hellfire or equivalent missiles and also be equipped with a sensor suite including EO/IR, Synthetic Aperture Radar/Ground Moving Target Indicator (SAR/GMTI) and Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) to support land or maritime missions.
The U.S. wants to use the UCAV for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions and to provide firepower for Close Air Support (CAS) missions.
In Turkiye, Baykar is also working on a similar project with Bayraktar TB3. The TB3 UCAV recently performed its maiden flight and, in a short period of time, flew with retracted landing gears. TB3 will be deployed at TCG Anadolu L400.
