"The father of them all' — How Europe's top-secret Barracuda drone shaped the future of combat…

• Barracuda's technologies now power Europe's largest military aviation projects
• Europe's largest unmanned aircraft emerged from a secret programme
• Barracuda pioneered manned and unmanned aircraft cooperation concepts

On April 2, 2006, at San Javier Airport in Spain, an unmanned aircraft released its brakes, went to full thrust, and lifted off after less than 1,000 metres of runway.

The entire first flight lasted just 15 minutes, but what those minutes represented took 40 months of intensive, secretive development to produce.

The Barracuda project launched in early 2003 at Airbus in Manching, Germany, initially running as a classified programme deliberately kept away from bureaucratic oversight.

A secret programme built inside a bubble

The team studied both civil and military aircraft development before stripping away everything unnecessary.

"It was an incredible feeling, we had achieved the seemingly impossible," said Peter Hunkel, who led the programme with a core team of just 35 people.

Thomas...

Copyright of this story solely belongs to techradar.com. To see the full text click HERE