THE US Navy is building an unmanned, solar-powered plane that will be able to fly for up to 90 days on its own. 

The uncrewed aircraft will act as a constant eye in the sky for US Navy ships or could potentially be used as a communications relay platform. 

US-Spanish aerospace firm Skydweller Aero was awarded a $5million contract to develop the new plane, New Scientist reports. 

The upgraded aircraft is adding new software and improving hardware to the Solar Impulse 2, which is also solar-powered but needs a pilot. 

It successfully completed a trip around the world in 2015 but could only do so with stops in between. 

With a human pilot on board, the trip was forced to stop every five days. 

Without the pilot on board, it also offers up more space for hardware to be installed. 

“When we remove the cockpit, we are enabling true persistence and providing the opportunity to install up to about 400 kilograms of payload capacity,” Skydweller CEO Robert Miller told New Scientist. 

'OPERATE FOR 90-PLUS DAYS'

“We are currently following our plan to test autonomous flight, then autonomous take-off, then autonomous landing, and finally our first fully autonomous flight,” he added of the new aircraft. 

“Once all this has been proven, we will move into long-endurance testing with the goal of operating for 90-plus days.”

The Skydweller aircraft will be much heavier and larger than other high-altitude solar aircraft currently under development. 

It will have 72-meter wings covered in solar cells and will be fitted with hydrogen field cells for an additional boost. 

“That makes sense for the US Navy in particular, which faces some pretty serious weather at high altitude over the Indo-Pacific region,” Justin Bronk from the Royal United Services Institute told New Scientist. 

“Hydrogen fuel cells make sense as a backup if you need to climb rapidly if there is bad weather intruding.”

NAVY WANTS LONGER FLIGHT TIME

The Navy is currently using airliner-sized MQ-4C Triton drones to monitor ships on patrols.

These can carry out 30-hour flights yet the Navy is eager for longer flight times. 

“The biggest advantage of long endurance is not having to make repeated transits to and from the operating area,” Bronk added. 

Yet he claimed that the aircraft could also be used for commercial telecommunications. 

“It may still not have enough power for an active sensor like radar, but it could be useful for passive sensors such as cameras, or as a communications node,” he said. 

Skydweller, an aerospace company developing renewably powered aircraft for defense and commercial industries, established new headquarters in Oklahoma City just last year. 

It also has offices in Washington DC and was founded in Spain in 2017. 

It began construction on the new autonomous aircraft last month after the successful flight of its Solar Impulse 2 optionally manned prototype. 

“The flight was two-and-a-half hours and the aircraft climbed to nearly 16,000 ft [4,876 m],” Miller told Janes. 

“There was significant hardware – many parts in-house designed – installed as enhancements and upgrades to the initial aircraft, including advancements to aircraft functionality, including sensor, computing, and communications infrastructure required to achieve autonomous flight,” he added. 

Two earlier flights were conducted in December 2020 and February of this year. 

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