BAE System Taranis Stealth UAV

Taranis is notable mostly for its stealth capabilities, which are analogous to those of a conventional stealth plane in terms of design. Its body is angled so as to present only deflecting angles to the ground, minimizing any reflections that might bounce back to be read by the interrogating radar machine. Taranis’ overall mission is to carry out high-speed, high-precision strikes over long distances without detection — this is quite possibly the first real sign of the riskless future of warfare which so many futurists warn. If neither pilot nor plane are ever likely to be in danger, launching a mission could become a much easier decision to make.

Though it might not look like much against the abstract backdrop of the sky, Taranis is no tiny remote-controlled plane. With a 10-meter wingspan, the aircraft is larger than you might expect for an unmanned vehicle; the logistics of both stealth and long-range flight push the design toward a large, mostly flat-ish belly and wings. While the building material is not currently known (and won’t be for many years) it likely incorporates specially light- and radar-deadening materials to weigh in, as it does, at just eight tonnes. With a budget of more than $300 million and more than a million man-hours invested, Taranis is a major part of the UK’s overall strategy for evolving its military in the coming decade. The country has already identified drones as one of the drivers of its next-generation fighting forces, and stealth drones are a necessary component of that push.

This news comes just months after the public learned of probable test flights for the USA’s latest undetectable UAV, the RQ-180 over the military’s (in)famous Area 51 test site. Its predecessor, the RQ-170 Sentinel, is thought to have participated in operations over Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, among others. In fact, the Chinese military, which has lagged far behind in its development of drone technology, has been testing a stealth drone of its own, named Sharp Sword by the media. In a statement, Chinese government officials claimed that the (possible) introduction of a working stealth drone “has again narrowed the air-power disparity between [China] and Western nations.” And they’re probably right.

In the future, technological advancement in military technology will be less about scaling up technologies (Lockheed’s proposed Mach 6 follow up to the SR-71 notwithstanding) and more about streamlining. Bombs don’t need to get any bigger, nor (most) planes much faster, nor most satellites more accurate. Rather, militaries need to be able to deliver the same bombs with fewer risks to both life and equipment. They need to be able to perform the same strikes while leaving no evidence of their connection to the event — and in a post-Snowden world, that could very well mean cutting the pilot out, too.

Actually, autonomy was a big part of the pitch for Taranis in the first place, but somewhere along the line the autonomy became unpopular. Now, the system has the “technical capability” of flying without a remote pilot, but will apparently not be used that way. It’s easy to get cynical about the truth of such statements, but the fact is that even the US government is approaching military autonomy with difficulty and great care; it’s not unreasonable to think that Taranis might simply struggle with getting autonomy to work. However, the language used implies that this was a policy-based decision — perhaps someone decided it would be best to let the USA deal with any bad press associated with the first autonomous military robot.

Regardless, the functionality is reportedly moot, today. Whatever the reason, remotely controlled Taranis vehicles will be taking to the skies on Britain’s behalf soon enough. Given how long it’s taken to find out about just a test flight, and the impressive claims made for its stealth abilities, it’s entirely possible that it already has.