The U.S. Air Force is seeking a family of target drones that can replicate threats ranging from small drone swarms to stealth fighters, strategic bombers and airborne early-warning aircraft. The service outlined the effort in a Request for Information, with industry responses due Sept. 28, as it looks for systems realistic enough to test modern weapons and sensors but inexpensive enough to risk or destroy during testing. Defense News and The War Zone reported the requirements.
The proposed family would cover the “full range of airborne threats,” from inexpensive hobby drones to advanced adversary fighters and large aircraft, the RFI says. The Air Force also wants the systems to be simple and inexpensive enough to be “treated as attritable or expendable when required.” That requirement would support tests in which targets are routinely consumed rather than preserved as high-value aircraft.
The service is inviting commercial, modified-commercial, dual-use and non-developmental proposals instead of limiting the effort to traditional defense programs. The RFI identifies cost, scalability and simplicity as advantages sought from commercially derived or other non-traditional solutions. The request does not identify a selected design or announce a procurement award.
For targets representing advanced fighters, the Air Force wants supersonic performance up to and exceeding Mach 1.6 at 40,000 feet, along with high-agility and high-G combat maneuvers. The drones would also need precise low-observable radar-cross-section profiles, multispectral infrared signatures, active radio-frequency emissions and integrated electronic-attack capabilities.
Those requirements extend beyond reproducing an aircraft’s speed or maneuverability. The requested radar, infrared, radio-frequency and electronic-warfare characteristics are intended to present test systems with signatures associated with sophisticated combat aircraft, including stealthy fighters. The RFI separately calls for realistic physical and sensor characteristics for larger aircraft, rather than applying one target design across every threat category.
For C-130-sized multiengine aircraft, the focus would shift to physical scale, slow subsonic flight, and propeller or turbofan propulsion characteristics. These targets would need representative volume, basic radio-frequency and infrared emissions, and realistic radar returns to help verify missile-seeker guidance and assess warhead lethality against large airframes.
Targets representing strategic bombers and airborne early-warning aircraft would emphasize massive physical dimensions, multispectral thermal signatures and heavy-aircraft radar characteristics. The proposed family would also include targets for several uncrewed-aircraft groups: Group 5 systems should operate at up to 50,000 feet; Group 3 and 4 targets should fly at about Mach 0.5 to 0.8 and maneuver at 3 to 6 Gs; and Group 1 and 2 targets should fly below 150 knots and operate in swarms.
The requirements address limitations in systems the Air Force already uses. The BQM-167A, in service since 2007, is a subsonic subscale target about 20 feet long with an 11-foot wingspan. The converted QF-16 provides a full-size, high-performance target suitable for fourth-generation fighter-type threats, but the Air Force describes the new effort as seeking systems that can also represent fifth-generation fighters, large aircraft and expendable targets produced in quantity.
The RFI follows earlier efforts to develop more advanced aerial targets, including the 5th Generation Aerial Target program, whose progress has been limited, The War Zone reported. The immediate next step is the Sept. 28 deadline for industry responses, after which the Air Force can assess proposed approaches against the range of performance, signature, scale and affordability requirements.