Italian Forces

Italian UCAVs forerunner

This today almost unknown Italian aircraft as can be a forerunner of modern Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles or UCAVs. The original project, in effect, was for an assault radio-controlled aircraft although the ship tested was a “manned” aircraft. Despite the unsuccessful test of a S.79 radio-controlled on 1942, the concept of a remote controlled plane for stand-off missions against hard targets like the British Fleet, promoted by Col. Ferdinando Raffaelli, chief of Technical Studies Office of Air Staff, wasn’t abandoned and was carried forward with a specific design assigned to Aeronautica Lombarda. The latter were a small factory of Cantù, on Lombardia, skilled in aircrafts with wooden structure, as the gliders. In effect, anticipating an expendable plane, the requirement was the use of non-strategic materials like the wood and of salvaged engines. On November 1942 Aeronautica Lombarda, was awarded of a 4.200.000 lire contract for a prototype and five series aircraft, military codes from MM 75576 to MM 75581, for the project AR (for Assalto Radioguidato/Assault Radio-Controlled) developed by Sergio Stefanutti. The AR, or AR4, were a monoplane without flaps with landing gear released after the take-off (and recovered after), structure completely in wood, powered by a single 1000-HP Fiat A.80 RC.41 radial engine salvaged from scrapped BR.20, load two 1.000 kg bombs. Take-off and first phase of AR’s flight were, according the project, on “manned” mode with a single pilot in a very simple cockpit and an “unmanned” mode under radio-control, after the pilot’s bail out with parachute, for the remainder flight until the target. The possibility of the aircraft’s return after the bombs release with belly landing was also expected. The prototype, MM.75576, was a ”manned” plane, two tandem seats, fixed conventional landing gear, which flew for first time at Venegono, near Varese, with the test pilot Nello Valzania at the controls, on 13 June 1943. The afterward tests were successful and the aircraft flew from Venegono to Guidonia’s Test Center, near Rome, for another test campaign. The order was confirmed and Aeronautica Lombarda started the series production. The first plane, MM.75577, was completed on August 1943 while the others were on different stages of building at moment, 8 September 1943, of Italian armistice’s announcement. The program was halted and the aircraft under construction was destroyed while the prototype’s fate is unknown. According some sources between some documents commandeered by Allied and afterwards returned to Italians was discovered the design of an AR’s airframe coupled with a Macchi MC.202 fighter, a solution similar to German Mistel. Victor Sierra