Return of the J-UCAS

Anybody remember something called the Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems (J-UCAS)?

That was the multi-billion dollar project that came just before what we now call UCAS-D, and just after what we used to call UCAV and UCAV-N. I hope that's all clear.

But J-UCAS died an obscenely protracted death in 2006 on the busy gallows of formerly joint weapons programs.

The man in charge of that program, if you remember, was Dr. Michael Francis, of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Well, he's back -- and he's mad.

Or maybe he's just annoyed. But he now works for General Atomics's Photonics Division, and he presented at last week's Shephard's UAS conference.

In his presentation, Francis makes the unusually impolite gesture of bashing the program that replaced his own. On the second slide, he writes: "This is not UCAS". The message appears over pictures showing the vehicles that the Navy and the Air Force have chosen to call exactly that.

His point is that the heart of his former DARPA program was not the vehicles but an interesting feature he called the common operating system (COS). It was a single database that operated, maintained, equipped and connected the unmanned combat systems of both services. When the J-UCAS program died, Francis' idea for the COS was the ultimate casualty. Both J-UCAS vehicles remain potentially viable candidates for operational service, but the COS by all accounts has been discarded.