Company type | Operating Division |
---|---|
Industry | Aerospace and Advanced Research and Development |
Founded | by McDonnell Douglas |
Headquarters | Washington D.C. , United States |
Key people | Steve Nordlund (Vice President / General Manager) [1] |
Number of employees | 2,600 |
Parent | Boeing |
Website | Website |
Boeing Phantom Works is the advanced prototyping arm of the defense and security side of Boeing. Its primary focus is developing advanced military products and technologies, many of them highly classified.
Founded by McDonnell Douglas, the research and development group continued after Boeing acquired the company. Its logo is similar to one used for the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom fighter.
Phantom Works' organization mirrors that of Boeing's Defense business units, with 'Advanced' versions of each unit (e.g. Advanced Boeing Military Aircraft). The underlying technology is provided by the Boeing Research and Technology (BR&T) organization, who develop new technologies (i.e. Technology Readiness Level 1–4) for use by Boeing's Commercial and Defense units. Phantom Works responsibility is to grow those technologies into prototype (i.e. Technology Readiness Level 4–6) to then transition those prototypes to the business units to turn into products (i.e. Technology Readiness Level 7–9).
Headquartered in Washington D.C., Phantom Works has projects in most Boeing locations in the United States.
Additionally an international group does modelling and simulation work for various governments in the United States, [2] Britain, [3] Australia, [4] and India. [5]
McDonnell Douglas Corporation was a major American aerospace manufacturing corporation and defense contractor, formed by the merger of McDonnell Aircraft and the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1967. Between then and its own merger with Boeing in 1997, it produced well-known commercial and military aircraft, such as the DC-10 and the MD-80 airliners, the F-15 Eagle air superiority fighter, and the F/A-18 Hornet multirole fighter.
The Northrop/McDonnell Douglas YF-23 is an American single-seat, twin-engine, stealth fighter technology demonstrator prototype designed for the United States Air Force (USAF). The design team, with Northrop as the prime contractor, was a finalist in the USAF's Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) demonstration/validation competition, battling the YF-22 team for full-scale development and production. Two YF-23 prototypes were built.
The Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) was a program undertaken by the United States Air Force to develop a next-generation air superiority fighter with a leap in performance and capability over the F-15 Eagle to counter emerging worldwide threats in the 1980s, including Soviet Sukhoi Su-27 and Mikoyan MiG-29 fighters under development, Beriev A-50 airborne warning and control systems (AWACS), and increasingly sophisticated surface-to-air missile systems. The ATF would take advantage of emerging technologies, including advanced avionics and flight control systems, more powerful propulsion systems, and stealth technology.
The Boeing X-32 is a concept demonstrator aircraft that was designed for the Joint Strike Fighter competition. It lost to the Lockheed Martin X-35 demonstrator, which was further developed into the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II.
Black project is an informal term used to describe a highly classified, top-secret military or defense project that is not publicly acknowledged by government, military personnel, or contractors.
The Lockheed/
Boeing Defense, Space & Security (BDS) is a division of The Boeing Company based in Arlington, Virginia, near Washington, D.C. The division builds military airplanes, rotorcraft, and missiles, as well as space systems for both commercial and military customers, including satellites, spacecraft, and rockets.
The Boeing X-48 is an American experimental unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) built to investigate the characteristics of blended wing body (BWB) aircraft. Boeing designed the X-48 and two examples were built by Cranfield Aerospace in the UK. Boeing began flight testing the X-48B version for NASA in 2007. The X-48B was later modified into the X-48C version, which was flight tested from August 2012 to April 2013. Boeing and NASA plan to develop a larger BWB demonstrator.
The Dassault nEUROn is an experimental unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) being developed with international cooperation, led by the French company Dassault Aviation. Countries involved in this project include France, Greece, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. The design goal is to create a stealthy, autonomous UAV that can function in medium-to-high threat combat zones.
The Boeing Bird of Prey is an American black project aircraft, intended to demonstrate stealth technology. It was developed by McDonnell Douglas and Boeing in the 1990s. The company provided $67 million of funding for the project; it was a low-cost program compared to many other programs of similar scale. It developed technology and materials which would later be used on Boeing's X-45 unmanned combat air vehicle. As an internal project, this aircraft was not given an X-plane designation. There are no public plans to make this a production aircraft. It is characterized as a technology demonstrator.
The Lightweight Fighter (LWF) program was a United States Air Force technology evaluation program initiated in the late 1960s by a group of officers and defense analysts known as the "Fighter Mafia". It was spurred by then-Major John Boyd's 'energy-maneuverability' (E-M) theory, which indicated that excessive weight would have severely debilitating consequences on the maneuverability of an aircraft. Boyd's design called for a light-weight fighter with a high thrust-to-weight ratio, high maneuverability, and a gross weight of less than 20,000 lb (9,100 kg), half that of its counterpart, the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle. It resulted in the development of the General Dynamics YF-16 and Northrop YF-17. Late in the program, in 1974, with the promise of European sales, the Air Force changed the program name to Air Combat Fighter (ACF), and committed to purchasing 650 models of the YF-16, adopted as the F-16 Fighting Falcon. The U.S. Navy adopted a modified version of the YF-17 as the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet.
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Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is a development and acquisition program intended to replace a wide range of existing fighter, strike, and ground attack aircraft for the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, and formerly Turkey. After a competition between the Boeing X-32 and the Lockheed Martin X-35, the latter aircraft was selected for a contract award and developed into the F-35 Lightning II, which will replace various tactical aircraft, including the US F-16, A-10, F/A-18A-D, AV-8B, EA-6B and British Harrier GR7, GR9s and Tornado GR4. The projected average annual cost of the program is $12.5 billion in 2012 with an estimated cost in 2024 of $2 trillion over its lifespan.
A high-altitude platform station, also known as atmospheric satellite, is a long endurance, high altitude aircraft able to offer observation or communication services similarly to artificial satellites. Mostly unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), they remain aloft through atmospheric lift, either aerodynamic like airplanes, or aerostatic like airships or balloons. High-altitude long endurance (HALE) military drones can fly above 60,000 ft over 32 hours, while civil HAPS are radio stations at an altitude of 20 to 50 km above waypoints, for weeks.
The Boeing Phantom Eye is a high altitude, long endurance (HALE) liquid hydrogen-powered unmanned aerial vehicle developed by Boeing Phantom Works. The aircraft was Boeing's proposal to meet the demand from the US military for unmanned drones designed to provide advanced intelligence and reconnaissance work, driven by the combat conditions in Afghanistan in particular. In August 2016, the Phantom Eye demonstrator was disassembled for display at the Air Force Flight Test Museum.
The Boeing Phantom Ray is an American demonstration stealth unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) developed by Boeing. The autonomous Phantom Ray is a flying wing around the size of a conventional fighter jet, and first flew in April 2011. It will conduct a program of test flights involving surveillance, ground attack and autonomous aerial refueling missions. The developers say it can carry 4,500 pounds of payload.
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