The X-45 was born from the studies of a number of programs in the 1990's aimed at producing technology that could be incorporated into a viable uninhabited air vehicle designed to autonomously conduct a range of operational missions including strike and suppression of enemy air defences. The successful conduct of the X-45 program paved the way for the new generation of Uninhabited Combat Air Vehicles being flight tested in the early part of this second decade of the 21st Century including the Boeing Phantom Ray, which is a direct descendant of the X-45 Advanced Technology Demonstrators of the previous decade.