Remote Carriers: Airbus' project to convert the A400M into an aircraft carrier airplane

The idea of ​​an "aircraft carrier airplane" may seem like something out of a Marvel movie, but it's not even a new concept in aviation.

The first projects to create flying aircraft carriers arose in the 1920s, when the US Navy launched two large airships, the USS Akron and the USS Macon, capable of carrying Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawk biplane fighters. The project fizzled out at the end of the airship era in the second half of the 1930s, but after World War II, airplanes were once again used as platforms for launching other aircraft into the air. Specifically, a modified B-29 bomber launched the first aircraft to break the sound barrier, the Bell X-1, in 1946. As early as 1959, the North American X-15 was launched from the wing of a B-52. But these were test aircraft.

Now Airbus Defense aims to bring this concept to combat aviation. Today, it has published an interesting video of the first tests of its Remote Carriers project, with which it aims to convert the successful A400M Atlas tactical transport aircraft into an aircraft carrier. Or rather, into a drone carrier within the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) program, which aims to provide a sixth-generation fighter to the air forces of Germany, Spain, and France. The plan is to transport drones in the cargo hold of the A400M and launch them in flight. To do this, a full-size, fully equipped A400M fuselage available in Bremen was used for integration and final testing before ground and flight testing on a real A400M."

"The main objective of these tests was to determine the required safety distance between the UAV and the aircraft ramp and to observe whether the trajectory of the launched drone matches pre-calculated simulations," Airbus said. With each repetition, a modified DT-25 target drone landed safely in a "ball pit" filled with foam chips.

The Remote Carriers "will be able to act as remote sensors, carrying a wide range of payloads suitable for ISTAR missions, Airbus points out on its website. Other versions will be able to directly engage threats, both kinetically and non-kinetically (e.g., through Electronic Attack). The Remote Carriers will be modular, meaning the specific payload can be chosen according to the planned mission and required capabilities, effectively turning them into multi-mission air combat assets."

In October 2020, Airbus proposed that these flying carriers could be unmanned aircraft: "They will be combined with tomorrow's NGF [Next Generation Fighter, referring to FCAS] and even with improved in-service aircraft like the Eurofighter. With RC packages combined with combat aircraft, we will provide the increased combat mass needed in highly contested environments. This will be achieved flexibly depending on the scenario, given the incremental nature of the capabilities provided by RCs."

"An increase in effectiveness will be achieved by opening up new fields of tactics based on collaborative combat and the use of deception and numerical superiority to disrupt and overwhelm the opponent," Airbus states. "Efficiency will be improved by ensuring that the combination of capabilities required for a given mission is available. Manned assets can remain at a safer distance, while closer RCs will engage threats., thus keeping pilots out of harm's way and increasing the survivability of manned platforms."

Here you can see a video published by Airbus Defence showing what these collaborative combat tactics between drones and FCAS will be like: