The XQ-58A Valkyrie demonstrator on its inaugural flight, 5 March 2019 | Credit: US Air Force; Wikipedia; Public DomainDefense News reports that the US Air Force announced Monday that during the Kratos XQ-58A Valkyrie UAV’s “sixth flight test at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, it opened its payload bay doors during flight for the first time and released an ALTIUS-600, a small, tube-launched autonomous drone made by Area-I.” The Valkyrie is “an ‘attritable’ drone, the word the military uses for an asset that can be reused but is cheap enough that a commander would expect and be comfortable with a certain amount of losses while in combat.” Steve Fendley, President of Kratos Unmanned Systems Division, “said the success of the ALTIUS release ‘adds an exclamation point to the 30-month development of the Valkyrie system by the Kratos and AFRL team, which resulted in a pre-production system with substantial operational capability, not simply a proof-of-concept flight demonstrator.’” Full Story (Defense News)
