Takeaways from visit to Western Museum of Flight, January 2020, part 2: Northrop and Teledyne Ryan drones

It is common knowledge that American drones specifically designed for combat became widespread only in the late 1990s, even though unmanned air vehicles as a whole have been in widespread use by the US military since the 1940s. Thus, most Americans who take a vested interest in US weaponry may not realize that drone technology has existed in the United States for about as long as heavier-than-air powered flight. Although the Northrop Grumman's RQ-4 Global Hawk and RQ-180 reconnaissance UAVs and X-47B Pegasus UCAV technology demonstrator have made some headlines in the US aerospace defense news arena, Northrop actually entered the UAV business design in 1952 when it acquired the Radioplane Company (responsible for developing the OQ-2/3/7/13/14/TDD target drones in World War II) that year, continuing the manufacturing activities of Radioplane in Van Nuys before moving its UAV business to Newbury Park in Ventura County in 1962, after which Radioplane Division was renamed Northrop-Ventura. Another major player in American subsonic drone development during the Cold War was the Ryan Aeronautical division of Teledyne, which built the Firebee, Lightning Bug, and Firefly drones. Since the Radioplane Division of Northrop and Teledyne Ryan were key players in US military subsonic drone development during the Cold War, and the Ryan Aeronautical Division of Teledyne would later become part of Northrop Grumman, I've decided to discuss in this post a number of Northrop- and Teledyne Ryan-built drones that I saw at the Western Museum of Flight when it visited the museum last month.

Left: Northrop RP-71/MQM-57 Falconer drone at Western Museum of Flight

Right: MQM-57 Falconer being readied for launch

The first drone on display at the Western Museum of Flight that deserves discussion is the Northrop (Radioplane) RP-71 Falconer propeller-driven drone (designated SD-1 by the US Army and designated MQM-57 by the Pentagon after 1963). Developed in 1955 as a derivative of Radioplane's earlier Quail drone (originally called OQ-19 by USAAF and KD2R-1/2/3/4 by US Navy; later redesignated MQM-33), it was designed for battlefield reconnaissance and had a slightly bigger fuselage than the Shelduck. The MQM-57 was launched from a ground platform by RATO booster, and could release flares to illuminate the night sky on night reconnaissance missions. About 1,500 Falconers were built, and they served the US Army and other armies of main US allies until the 1970s.

Left: Northrop KD2R-5/MQM-36 Shelduck at Western Museum of Flight.

Right: A pair of MQM-36 Shelducks aboard the USS Kearsarge, 1966.

Another early Northrop/Radioplane drone displayed at the museum worthy of discussion, related to the above-discussed Falconer drone, is the KD2R-5 Shelduck (later redesignated MQM-36). It was similar to the naval version of the Quail drone (KD2R-1/2/3/4) in having a McCulloch O-100 piston engine and being launched from a mobile platform, but had an improved autopilot and altitude-hold unit. The Shelduck entered service with the US Navy in the mid-1950s, and it became a training target for anti-aircraft missiles including the Hawk, Sidewinder, Nike, Tigercat, Redeye, Blowpipe, and Sparrow. The last MQM-36 drones were retired in the late 1980s.

Top: Teledyne Ryan AQM-34K (Model 147SRE) at Western Museum of Flight

Bottom: AQM-34L (Model 147SC) over North Vietnam, late 1968

The Teledyne Ryan Model 147 Lightning Bug drone I saw at the museum is a Cold War-era American drone that most Americans don't think about too much. The Ryan (later Teledyne Ryan) Firebee drone was one of the most successful American drones of the Cold War era, designed to be launched from either a DC-130 Hercules or from a ground platform via rocket boosters. Impressed by the success of the Firebee drone, the USAF in February 1962 instructed Ryan to develop a reconnaissance version of Firebee as the Model 147 Lightning Bug (military designation: AQM-34), recognizing the need for a spy drone able to fly above 55,000 feet, well above detection by enemy radar. The first Model 147s entered operational service in late 1962, but the drone itself had to wait until after the start of US involvement in Vietnam in August 1964 to start flying operational reconnaissance missions. AQM-34s were launched from DC-130 drone carrier versions of the Hercules tactical airlifter on spy flights over North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, performing a variety of tasks like photographic and electronic aerial reconnaissance, surveillance, signals intelligence, and electronic warfare. The Lightning Bug drone on display at the Western Museum of Flight is of the Model 147SRE variant (military designation: AQM-34K). Although similar to the baseline BQM-34A Firebee in appearance, its fuselage was 8 feet longer and power was provided by a Continental J69 turbojet, and the AQM-34K itself was optimized for low-altitude reconnaissance and used an improved guidance system with Doppler navigation radar. Twenty AQM-34Ks were built, with operational missions occurring from November 1968 to October 1969. The preserved AQM-34K was acquired by the Western Museum of Flight in 2001, after spending 15 years at the California Science Center.

Top: Northrop NV-144 prototype reconnaissance drone

Bottom: Display panel for NV-144, including 3-view drawing

As I had mentioned earlier before, Northrop had been building drones decades before the appearance of the RQ-4 Global Hawk and X-47 Pegasus, having acquired the drone manufacturer Radioplane and building the MQM/BQM-74 Chukar at a facility in Ventura County. However, what is lost in talk regarding Northrop drone design in the last years of the Cold War is the fact that in the mid-1980s Northrop initiated development of a subsonic reconnaissance drone derived from the existing Chukar drone in response to the joint Air Force/Navy requirement for a new-generation high subsonic target drone (designated BQM-126) to replace the Firebee and Chukar drones. The Northrop entry, designated NV-144, first flew in February 1984, with a Grumman A-6 Intruder serving as a launch platform for the drone, but the BQM-126 production contract was awarded to the Beech/Martin Model 997 (first flight March 1984), a derivative of the Beech MQM-107 Streaker. Unfortunately, production plans for the BQM-126 (the Navy hoped to procure 700 drones) were axed, perhaps due to a lack of funds.