Mother Ship

The J-UCAS may launch small, expendable unmanned aircraft for special missions, such as attacking, jamming or decoying enemy air defenses

By RICHARD R. BURGESS, Managing Editor

A derivative of the Joint Unmanned Combat Air System (J-UCAS) planned for naval service by the end of the next decade may launch smaller, expendable unmanned aircraft specially designed for reconnaissance or to jam, attack or decoy high-value targets such as enemy air defenses.

Built for low-level operations, the ideal attack craft launched from the J-UCAS would be “small enough not to be seen or intercepted,” said Navy Capt. Ralph Alderson, director of a J-UCAS concept demonstrator program. If developed, the attack craft could be a central element to the success of the J-UCAS, which is currently designed as a high-altitude flyer but expected to handle ground targets.

Alderson and other J-UCAS program officials are assessing the feasibility of smaller unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to be launched by the larger craft for the suppression of enemy air defenses, a central rationale for the $4 billion J-UCAS program.

J-UCAS is a joint program administered by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and operated by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Air Force and the Navy. It comprises the once separate DARPA/Air Force and DARPA/Navy unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) demonstration programs into a single effort to develop and experiment with the potential of UCAVs in intelligence, reconnaissance, surveillance and strike roles.

The Boeing X-45A and Northrop Grumman X-47A UCAV demonstrator designs are being improved as the X-45C and X-47B versions, respectively. They will be built by 2006 to participate in an operational evaluation, scheduled to run from 2007 to 2010. The goal of the evaluation is to enable the Navy and Air Force to decide whether to proceed with development of operationally useful UCAVs.

The J-UCAS program office has asked small businesses for ideas on the design of small unmanned systems to arm the J-UCAS. “There are some UAV companies out there that are looking at air-launched expendable systems,” Alderson said.

Using the J-UCAS as a mother plane would greatly enhance the tactical value of the specialized, smaller UAVs, Alderson said. “It allows you to take it in on something bigger with longer legs and [that] has more persistence.”

The J-UCAS is key to the success of Navy and Air Force tactical aircraft operations of the future. The Navy’s tentative plan is to equip each of its aircraft carriers with one squadron of four planes. The planes could be controlled by a single operator and would work in conjunction with the carrier’s air wing.

“They will have the ability to operate by themselves and in collaboration with other J-UCAS and other air vehicles,” said Capt. Peter Sherman, a UAV expert for air warfare in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. It is possible that manned and unmanned aircraft would go out in pairs and work together, he said.

Operations envisioned for the J-UCAS would necessitate operating in the same airspace with manned aircraft, and that poses special challenges. Rear Adm. Anthony L. Winns, deputy director for air warfare in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, said manned tactical aircraft are “able to make split-second decisions on targets and also make adjustments on the fly.”

With UAVs, there are “issues of latency in command — that means [UAVs] can’t react that fast. I think the systems we have on the drawing board right now are going to make that kind of thinking obsolete,” Alderson said.

Currently, UAVs are separated from manned aircraft and fly through operations areas when manned aircraft are elsewhere. UAVs such as the Global Hawk are kept “at extremely high altitudes. We block off altitudes and positions for them to operate in,” said Alderson. In the future, UAVs will be “smarter,” and equipped with features such as sense-and-avoid capabilities, so it will not be necessary to segregate them from manned aircraft or otherwise limit their operations.

J-UCAS program officials told Seapower that the operation of multiple UAVs is one of their top priorities.

“We don’t have the ‘cockpit on the ground’ mentality,” said Dr. Michael S. Francis, J-UCAS program director at DARPA. The current method of controlling surveillance UAVs such as Global Hawk and Predator is to fly the planes remotely from cockpits on the ground and perhaps thousands of miles distant.

“We are looking for the best way to handle the tasking issue for different kinds of tasks,” he said. “For example, managing payload operations versus managing health and status of vehicles versus managing trajectories of multiple vehicles.”

“One operator to four vehicles was the goal,” said Rod Lekey, Boeing’s director of business development for J-UCAS. “The final decision of the actual ratio has not been made yet. We’re still working through what the right number of vehicles is.”

Through simulation, J-UCAS officials have demonstrated the ability to control four, and possibly six, UAVs with one operator, Francis said. For missions such as suppression of air defenses, “the number of platforms that may have to deal with that could be well into double digits. The question now becomes what is the right number of tasks for crew members.”

However, Winns said, “The primary focus for developing naval UAV capabilities is centered around providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities. Our whole strategy is focused on ISR. The Navy has been very consistent with the capabilities desired [in UAVs].”

Penetrating ISR — operating a surveillance aircraft in hostile airspace — is the Navy’s vision for J-UCAS, but right now the service is focused on how to get the unmanned aircraft to the fight.

“Carrier suitability is the Navy’s primary objective for the J-UCAS program,” Winns told Seapower. “Can these vehicles take off and land on an aircraft carrier? We’ve never done that before with a vehicle shaped quite like these. It’s going to be a challenge, but we think that with the technology, with the full push by industry, we are going to be successful.”

Carrier suitability poses two major challenges for UAVs: landing and taxiing on deck. The landing system, Northrop Grumman’s Joint Precision Aircraft Landing System (JPALS), has been successfully demonstrated with an F/A-18 Hornet strike fighter.

“Around the aircraft carrier, JPALS is designed to allow a single controller to control multiple aircraft coming into and around the carrier,” said Rick Ludwig, Northrop Grumman’s J-UCAS program director.

For taxiing, Boeing “has built a small vehicle that is used to experiment with different control methods including hand controllers via infrared or via direct connection to the vehicle,” said Alderson. “Northrop Grumman is going to put a UCAV on deck and maneuver it around.”

“Where it’s really going to be a problem is where we have to be able to make a sortie generation count [the number of aircraft flights that a carrier can handle in a defined period] that the carrier is used to, so that when it gets on deck it’s going to have to be maneuvered out on its own and be maneuvered to the catapult on its own,” he said, so as not to slow down launch and recovery of other aircraft.

Alderson pointed out that although the J-UCAS is planned for the Navy’s next-generation carrier, the CVN 21 class, it also must be operable from the Navy’s current Nimitz-class carriers.

“We are looking to see how little we have to change in terms of the carrier environment to accommodate [J-UCAS],” said Francis. “We really are looking not to change the whole nature of the ship.”