A landmark event at the recently concluded Paris Air Show was the unveiling of a full scale mock up of Europe’s Neuron UCAV demonstrator on Monday June 13th, 2005 by French President Jacques Chirac. Interestingly, the Neuron project was launched by the French Defense Minister at the 2003 Paris Air Show.

The Neuron program is a pure technology demonstrator. It is not being developed to meet any existing defense needs of the three participating countries France, Switzerland and Italy. The project will facilitate application, integration and validation of technologies already existing or to be developed for unmanned flying vectors.

In simpler words Neuron is an attempt by European aerospace companies to catch up with the US in so far as UAV technologies go. The technological challenges that are being addressed are

• Development of a vehicle form and material to achieve the goals of Low Observability.
• Development of electronics for operating in a network centric environment.

Neuron will use a modular design and off the shelf commercially available computer and electronic components.

Though only three nations are currently funding the project, aerospace companies from six European nations are participating in it.

• Dassault Aviation of France provides the leadership and is responsible for general design and architecture, flight controls, final assembly, ground and flight tests.
• SAAB of Sweden is entrusted with the general design, fuselage, avionics, fuel system and part of flight testing.
• Hellenic Aerospace Industry (HAI) of Greece is responsible for rear fuselage, exhaust and test rig.
• EADS of Spain will bring its experience for the wings, ground station, and data link integration.
• RUAG of Switzerland is taking care of wind tunnel tests, and the weapon interface.
• Alenia of Italy will contribute with a new concept of internal weapon bay (Smart Weapon Bay), design and development of the electrical power system, air data system and flight tests.

It is interesting to note that two of the participating companies are independently working on developing UAV technology - Saab has its SHARC (Swedish Highly Advanced Research Configuration) and FILUR (Flying Innovative Low Observable Unmanned Research) projects. Alenia has the Sky-X UCAV Technology Demonstrator. These two companies will develop the technologies that they contribute to the Neuron project using their own testbeds.

SHARC (Swedish Highly Advanced Research Configuration)

FILUR (Flying Innovative Low Observable Unmanned Research)

First flight of the Neuron is expected in 2010. As the project makes headway it is likely that other European nations will join in. These include Germany, Belgium and possibly Russia.

A notable absentee from the European effort to develop UAC technology is UK which has already committed to procuring US technology. Aviation Week recently reported that UK might become the first overseas customer for the General Atomics Predator.

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