The Boeing Co. has made significant progress building the first of three X-45C air vehicles it plans to assemble for the Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems (J-UCAS) demonstration program, a company official said Oct. 13.

The center fuselage for the first plane is nearly complete structurally, and parts for the wings are flowing in to Boeing. Within the next month, the company expects to accept the first General Electric F404 engine that will power the X-45C.

"Lots of things are coming together," said Darryl Davis, who leads Boeing's X-45 efforts and spoke with reporters during a teleconference. "There's a lot of stuff coming into the factory" in St. Louis, Mo.

In 60 to 90 days, Boeing expects to conduct a baseline review with the U.S. government to iron out how the program will unfold over the next five years.

The X-45C program probably will undergo a final design review in late spring 2005, roll out its first air vehicle in early 2006, and take its first flight in early 2007, Davis said. An operational assessment is to follow from 2007 to 2010.

Boeing was awarded a $767 million contract Oct. 12 to continue its X-45C work for the next five years (DAILY, Oct. 13). Northrop Grumman Corp. was awarded a five-year, $1 billion contract in August to build three of its own X-47B air vehicles for J-UCAS (DAILY, Aug. 23).

If the government decides after evaluating the air vehicles that it wants to buy them in big numbers, an "abbreviated" system development and demonstration (SDD) phase could be pursued before moving into full-scale production, Davis said. J-UCAS is a joint effort of the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop unmanned aircraft for such missions as electronic attack, precision strike, surveillance and suppression of enemy air defenses.

The Air Force Research Laboratory's Sensors Directorate, meanwhile, is nearing a contractor selection for the X-Band Thin Radar Aperture (XTRA) array, which J-UCAS may use in the future to provide synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery and a ground moving target indicator (GMTI).

Northrop Grumman and Raytheon Co. are scheduled to submit competing proposals for XTRA in mid-November. The government could then pick one of the designs for continued development.