In early January of 2006 the first official images were released of a new unmanned aircraft called "Corax" or Raven, build by BAE. The jet-powered drone had performed several successful test flights as early as 2004 in Australia at the Woomera Range.
According to several analysts, the aircraft bears some resemblance to the secret American RQ-3A Darkstar stealth UAV, which was cancelled in 1999.
According to Bill Sweetman, an editor at Janes Defence Review, the Corax could be a member of a whole family of drones, based around a similar central body. After studying the photo's, he concludes the Corax is a relatively slow, long endurance, high flying reconnaissance aircraft. "It looks rather typical for a surveillance aircraft," he told the BBC. "But if you take those long outer wings off and put on shorter swept wings, you have a somewhat faster aircraft that would be more of a penetrating strike platform."
The UK has reportedly scrapped plans to build another manned fighter aircraft, after the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and Eurofighter programs, and is now working closely with the US on "Project Churchill". This project is a four and a half year collaboration between the UK Ministry of Defence and US Department of Defense to determine the cost-effectiveness of UCAV concepts "operating in a US/UK coalition warfare environment". It's goal is to design a framework for the operation of UCAVs "in a 2015 network-centric/ enabled environment".
The United States, however, recently cancelled it's Air Force UCAV program, the X-45C. The US defense department will begin work this year on a next-generation long-range strike aircraft and as part of this effort the X-45C had to be cancelled.
Another problem for "Project Churchill" is the reluctance of the US to share technical information with the British, which threatens to derail the Joint Strike Fighter program. The Brits have expressed their frustration about this many times, but the Pentagon, in December 2005, ignored this and decided to cancel a second engine program for the Joint Strike Fighter, to save about $2.4 billion. The alternate engine was jointly developed by General Electric and British-based Rolls-Royce.
Another unmanned aircraft build by BAE is a propeller-powered glider called Herti-1A. In August 2005, a Herti-1A plane performed the first ever completely autonomous uncrewed flight in UK airspace, reaching an altitude of 1500 metres.
The Corax prototype was first flown in 2004 after a 10-month development programme.
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