Archangel Provides a Sky-High View at Bargain-Basement Price
Former Northrop Grumman Corp. engineer Roy Wubker Jr. believes he’s developed an unmanned spy plane that can be the Pentagon’s equivalent of a disposable camera.
While his former employer sells state-of-the-art, $30-million jet-powered surveillance drones to the Defense Department, Wubker’s tiny Systems Research & Development Corp. in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., is selling a $40,000, unmanned propeller-driven plane he calls Archangel.
His lower-cost unmanned aerial vehicle also can fly over enemy terrain and send back images and data to a U.S. commander in the field -- or anywhere else in the world.
“We are very impressed with the capabilities of SRDC’s Archangel,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Cheryl Irwin. “It offers a favorable combination” at a relatively low cost.
Various military special operations units have ordered about 100 of Wubker’s UAVs, and his 22 employees are building six to eight a month, he said. The Pentagon declines to confirm the number of orders, and Wubker’s company is privately held.
But there’s no question the military is stepping up its use of unmanned spy planes, and cheaper, expendable UAVs such as Wubker’s are getting a chance.
Smaller drones “can provide on-demand, real-time information ... such as what’s on top of a particular building, over the hill or around the corner,” said Larry Dickerson, a defense analyst with research firm Forecast International in Newtown, Conn.
Northrop’s Global Hawk and the $3-million Predator UAV made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. in San Diego have been used in Afghanistan to help locate Al Qaeda and Taliban positions. Besides flying higher and farther than Wubker’s planes, the Global Hawk and Predator provide vastly more surveillance and intelligence-gathering abilities.
The Air Force has purchased seven Global Hawks from Northrop, the Century City-based contractor, since 1996 and this month ordered six more.
But for years there has been a debate over whether these drones are too costly, especially if they crash or get shot down.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is letting the military buy off-the-shelf gear directly instead of going through the Pentagon’s lengthy procurement process. And that’s prodded innovators such as Wubker, 41, who started his firm after leaving Northrop in 1989, to design much cheaper drones that can still quickly relay critical data.
Indeed, he and many others in the defense sector -- including the Pentagon itself -- see Archangel not as a rival that would cut orders for the Global Hawk and the Predator, but as a complement to those UAVs. “They all have their place,” Wubker said.
His goal, he added, is to get the price per unit down to $10,000 apiece once orders reach about 2,000 planes. At that price, “it will be no different than buying a TV set from Wal-Mart,” Wubker said.
The propeller-driven Archangel weighs 90 to 100 pounds, has a range of 2,200 miles and can stay aloft for 30 hours without landing.
They are sold in pairs for up to $86,000, depending on how they’re outfitted.
By contrast, the Global Hawk is 25,600 pounds, has a range of 13,500 miles and can remain airborne for up to 36 hours, during which time it could survey an area the size of 12 Iraqs and relay pictures and data throughout Northrop’s global network of defense-communications and command-and-control sites, according to company spokeswoman Cynthia Curiel.
But the Archangel can provide useful information to U.S. military personnel. For example, an Archangel could be deployed from a Navy ship to scour a nearby coast for enemy forces or assess the damage caused by a U.S. bombing of the area.
It also could detect the presence of biological or chemical weapons and then deliberately be crashed to avoid spreading contamination.
UAVs will face their toughest test in Iraq, which has an air-defense system that poses a much bigger threat than in Afghanistan, Dickerson said.
That’s fine with Wubker: “Let them shoot at it,” he said of the Archangel, “and give up their positions.”
