Innovative development

In 1994, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office launched a joint initiative with the goal to overcome the impediments that had hampered past unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) development. This effort--designated the High-Altitude Endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (HAE UAV ACTD) program--applied an innovative acquisition strategy to the development of two UAVs: one conventionally configured (Global Hawk) and the other with a low-observable configuration (DarkStar). The report summarizes the major research findings regarding the HAE UAV ACTD program's acquisition strategy. The authors conclude that despite DarkStar's cancellation--and despite overall program cost growth and schedule slippage in basic design and test of the two HAE UAV concepts, the ACTD program did accomplish its primary objective by successfully demonstrating the military utility of a UAV with a continuous, all-weather, wide-area surveillance capability. Although the program's single requirement--the unit flyaway price--was not met, it did promote cost consciousness while at the same time preventing the imposition of addition