Wave of the Future?

Officials question whether rising budgets, expanding missions and growing demand for unmanned aerial vehicle programs can be sustained

By JASON SHERMAN, Special Correspondent

An improving funding picture and favorable performance reviews from the services suggest that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have a bright future with the American armed forces, although some skeptics argue to the contrary.

Spending on UAVs has climbed sharply — from $360 million in 2001 to more than $2 billion in 2006. By the end of the decade, annual UAV spending is projected to reach $3 billion — equal to the total amount spent on these aircraft during the 1990s.

And since 2003, the number of different UAV systems on the Pentagon’s books has risen from 10 to 17, with the total number of aircraft standing at nearly 1,500. By the end of the decade, the total size of the U.S. military UAV fleet is expected to quadruple.

U.S. military operators have praised UAV performance in ever-expanding missions in Afghanistan, Iraq and other areas. Originally designed as reconnaissance platforms — Col. Sam Webster, an Army intelligence officer at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., developed the surveillance UAV, SD-1, when he affixed a camera to a target drone in 1953 to observe enemy troop movements — UAVs now are being armed with missiles and flying in support of such missions as counterinsurgency, force protection and infrastructure protection. As they continue to prove themselves, new roles for UAVs are being created and implemented.

Those with long memories, such as Air Force Col. Thomas Ehrhard, author of a 2002 doctoral dissertation on UAV integration into U.S. military from the 1950s, “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in the United States Armed Services: A Comparative Study of Weapon System Innovation,” however, caution that despite their recent proliferation, UAVs have yet to firmly establish themselves within service bureaucracies with loyal constituents to protect their interests in budget and policy deliberations.

The Vietnam War is seen as evidence of what can happen without such support. During Vietnam, UAVs flew more than 3,500 combat missions. But they fell out of the inventory and off military modernization plans during the 1970s, after the war was over.

U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee and a strong supporter of U.S. military spending and transformation, remains skeptical of the current state of UAVs. “I think we have wasted more United States taxpayer dollars in this area than in any that I can conceivably think of. We’re talking about a model airplane with a camera,” said Skelton at an April 14 hearing on UAVs.

Today’s push to move UAVs to the frontlines is being led by the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps and Special Forces officials. But while they race to press UAVs into service, the Navy is moving at its own pace. Over the next decade, the sea service plans to fold UAVs into its maritime surveillance operations.

“There is resistance to UAVs” within the Navy, said a service analyst with ties to leadership who asked to not to be identified. “It’s strongest within the aviation community. It’s taking jobs away from [fighter] pilots. And being a pilot of a UAV isn’t the same thing as being a pilot of a fighter.”

If there is resistance, there is also understanding in the Navy of the benefits UAVs bring. During the 1991 Gulf War, the Navy employed the Pioneer UAV to coordinate naval gunfire from its battleships. Some Iraqi soldiers in that conflict even tried to surrender to a Navy Pioneer. Since then, the Navy returned the Pioneer to the Marine Corps but embraced the idea of jointness with unmanned vehicles, investing in capabilities to downlink imagery and data from Air Force UAVs.

“The Navy has essentially been able to rely upon the Air Force to provide both Predator and Global Hawk support for ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) against land targets,” said Robert Work, a naval analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, D.C.

Some sea service leaders insist UAVs are key to future operations and transformation efforts. Rear. Adm. Anthony L. Winns and Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Martin Post, who head UAV efforts in the Pentagon for their respective services, told lawmakers in a joint statement that the Navy “is making positive progress in developing and fielding UAV systems.”

Indeed, the Navy is supporting Marine Corps efforts to procure the small Dragon Eye UAV, lease the Scan Eagle and continue modifications to the venerable Pioneer, as well as find a replacement for it — possibly a variant of the Coast Guard’s Eagle Eye tiltrotor UAV.

Meanwhile, the Navy is considering UAVs as it looks to recapitalize its land-based maritime ISR capabilities — specifically its aging P-3C and EP-3 aircraft. The Navy plans to replace its fleet of nearly 228 P-3C Orion submarine-hunting aircraft with roughly 100

P-8A Maritime Multimission Aircraft — based on a modified Boeing 737 airframe — and a fleet of yet-to-be-determined Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) UAVs. Its EP-3s will be replaced with a naval variant of the Army’s Aerial Common Sensor aircraft.

The BAMS program in December suffered a significant funding hit to its 2006-2011 spending plan — as did a long roster of Navy and Air Force programs — that resulted in cutting 10 aircraft from the program and delaying initial operating capability from 2010 to 2013. In light of this development, the service this spring essentially spiked the BAMS effort begun in 2001 and is returning to the drawing board to redefine a program for persistent maritime ISR capability.

While the name of the program remains intact, the Navy this summer is laying the groundwork for a new round of studies for “persistent unmanned maritime airborne surveillance.” A goal, service officials said, is to investigate options for integrating whatever UAV is selected for the mission into a wider networked environment of airborne naval sensors, including the MMA, Aerial Common Sensor, H-60 helicopters and the unmanned helicopter Fire Scout.

Service officials note that the program delay will give the Navy more time to experiment with two high-flying Global Hawk UAVs that are being delivered this year from the Air Force as part of a demonstration program to assess their utility for maritime surveillance. These aircraft, which can stay on station for 36 hours and be controlled from thousands of miles away, will participate in fleet experiments later this year.

After being nearly terminated in 2002, the prospects for the Fire Scout continue to improve now that it is paired with the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) — a program that could play a pivotal role in the Navy’s contribution to the war on terrorism. The Navy is enhancing Fire Scout with a fourth rotor blade to improve range, speed and payload capacity. Launched from the LCS, this aircraft will carry an array of sensors to provide commanders with real-time images of activity in surrounding waters as well as the means to hunt and destroy nearby surface ships, submarines and mines.

The ship-based Fire Scout may eventually lead the way for wider use of UAVs that launch from and return to naval vessels. The Joint Unmanned Combat Air System, which this fall will transfer from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to the Air Force for management, is developing two prototypes that are set to be evaluated in 2010 for their suitability for aircraft carrier operations.

“We need to need to demonstrate the capability to have the vehicle land and take off from the carrier,” said Winns.

Even if these programs pass muster, the final challenge will be for them to elbow their way into an already crowded, and expensive, naval aviation recapitalization portfolio that includes the MMA, the CH-53X rebuilding effort, a new fleet of improved H-1 helicopters, the Joint Strike Fighter and the V-22. The Navy may continue to husband its resources and rely on other services as it modernizes a sizeable portion of the manned fleet.

“There just isn’t a lot of money in the aviation pie to spend on this, and that’s one of the reasons why the Navy has said as long as the Air Force is buying Predator and Global Hawks, this is a good deal for us,” said Work.