Supersonic Firebees

The Firebee drone family is unquestionably the most versatile jet-powered unmanned air vehicle family developed and built during the Cold War, spawning numerous target drone, reconnaissance, and combat variants. However, not all target drone variants of the Firebee drone were subsonic, because in the 1970s to 1990s, the US Air Force and US Navy operated supersonic variants of the Firebee for target practice. Therefore, this post will focus on the variants of the Firebee designed for supersonic speed. 

A BQM-34E Firebee II in flight.

In 1965, Teledyne Ryan undertook design of a supersonic variant of the subsonic BQM-34A Firebee I, designated Model 166 by the company. To achieve supersonic flight, the Firebee II differed from the Firebee I in having a new and more slender fuselage measuring 29 feet 1.9 in (8.89 meters) long, which necessitated installation of a 1,920 lb (8.5 kN) thrust Teledyne CAE J69-T-406 turbojet. Like the Firebee I, the Firebee II used a two-stage parachute retrieval system, and it could fly at Mach 1.8 at an altitude of 45,000 feet (13,700 meters). Endurance of the drone 1 hour 15 minutes, and the Firebee II was also equipped with an external conformal fuel tank to allow for improved endurance, jettisoning the external fuel tank before boosting to supersonic speed. The main launch platform for the Firebee II was a DC-130 drone control aircraft.

Left: A BQM-34F after launch from Tyndall AFB in Florida on October 9, 1982.
Right: A BQM-34F (serial number 70-1418) on display at the San Diego Air and Space Museum, photographed by me on January 4, 2023.

Despite being different from the Firebee I in its longer fuselage, the Firebee II was designated in the BQM-34 series, receiving the designation BQM-34E when it was ordered by the US Navy for full-scale development. Test flights of the BQM-34E began in January 1968, and production orders were placed in 1969, with service entry commencing that year. The US Air Force in 1969 ordered its own version of the Firebee II as the BQM-34F, which entered service in 1971 and carried the AN/USW-3(V) ITCS electronic suite. Compared to the BQM-34E, the BQM-34F was slightly heavier and had a slightly bigger wingspan, and it could be retrieved in mid-air by helicopters equipped with a Mid-Air Retrieval System (MARS) while parachuting to the ground and hauled back to an airbase. In the early 1970s, several BQM-34Es were upgraded with AN/DKW-1 ITCS guidance transporters and designated as BQM-34T. A number of BQM-34F drones were used for flight tests of the supercritical wing from 1977 to 1983 as part of NASA's DAST (Drones for Aerodynamic and Structural Testing), with a B-52 as the launching aircraft.

A total of 286 Firebee II drones were built before the end of production in 1980. By the end of the 1980s, there were less than 50 Firebee IIs in operational service as a result of attrition, and the Firebee II was retired from service in 1990.