UAV Tests its Sea Legs

The Global Hawk has performed well on missions over land, but has not been assigned to long-range surveillance of the world’s oceans.

By RICHARD R. BURGESS, Managing Editor

The Navy is beginning development of a concept of operations for the persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) of wide swaths of the world’s oceans by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

The mission will be accomplished with new hardware. The Navy is developing high-flying UAVs that can stay aloft for many hours and perform missions such as scanning the maritime approaches to the nation’s coasts and tracking all ships approaching U.S. points of entry. Specialized, long-range maritime patrol missions — for signals intelligence and antisubmarine warfare, for example — have long been performed by the service’s P-3 family of surveillance aircraft.

Before embarking on this new venture, however, the Navy must first develop the tactics, techniques and procedures for operating long-range UAVs in their intended roles. That task will be accomplished over the next year by conducting a number of experiments called the Global Hawk Maritime Demonstration (GHMD), using the Air Force UAV that performed with great success in recent conflicts. However, the Global Hawk has not been employed as an ocean scanner, a task that requires different sensors and operational techniques.

Beginning in November, the Global Hawk will participate in Trident Warrior ’05, an exercise off the Virginia Capes sponsored by Fleet Forces Command and Naval Network Warfare Command to test various elements of the Navy’s FORCEnet concept of leveraging U.S. superiority in information systems to gain war-fighting advantages. Trident Warrior ’05 will be the first opportunity for the Global Hawk to demonstrate its capability to scan the world’s oceans.

The Navy’s Global Hawk then will participate in the Air Force’s Joint Expeditionary Force Exercise ’06 (JEFX ’06) next February and March on the West Coast. The objective will be to provide maritime intelligence to joint forces to pass to homeland security and homeland defense units and other federal agencies. Data collected by the Global Hawk will be used to identify, track and interdict ships of interest.

“Global Hawk will be the Navy’s top initiative during JEFX ’06,” said Lt. Cmdr. David Trzeciakiewicz, director of requirements, policy and experimentation for Sea Strike, Striking Fleet Atlantic. “We will look to Global Hawk to be a vital ISR tool that will assist strike group commanders in achieving maritime domain awareness in support of the joint force and to support homeland security and homeland defense efforts in the maritime realm.”

The concept of using a persistent UAV for maritime surveillance is quite simple. It would scan a large area of ocean — making five orbits in a 35-hour period, in one scenario — looking for ships of interest, such as one suspected of having weapons of mass destruction on board that is possibly heading for a U.S. port. When such a vessel is located, a Navy ship could be tasked to intercept it, or a maritime patrol aircraft such as a P-3 dispatched to further investigate the contact with radar, send images to command authorities and examine the ship up close.

“Since 9/11, this type of maritime littoral persistent ISR has gained a lot of support” as a homeland security measure, said Capt. Paul Morgan, program manager for naval unmanned aerial vehicles for the program executive officer for strike and unmanned aerial vehicles.

In August, the Navy will take delivery of the first of its two RQ-4A Global Hawks from the Air Force, according to Tom Twomey, Northrop Grumman’s manager for business development of Global Hawk Navy programs.

The first, N-1, is slated for Trident Warrior, and may be joined by N-2 if its modifications are ready in time. Both RQ-4As will be operated by Air Test & Evaluation Squadron 20, based at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., which normally evaluates new developments for such platforms as the P-3 and the E-2 radar warning aircraft. The Air Force currently is training Navy and Northrop Grumman personnel to operate the Global Hawks in the demonstrations.

The Navy Global Hawks feature a Raytheon-built Integrated Sensor Suite modified with radar modes suited for maritime surveillance. The radar features a maritime search mode — similar to a ground moving-target indicator — and a moving target-acquisition mode that refines the position and velocity of vessels detected by the radar. The radar then can use its inverse synthetic aperture mode to present high-resolution images of ships to the operator and command authorities.

Other sensors include a high-resolution electro-optical/infrared turret and an electronic surveillance system that has a 360-degree scan capability for emitting radars from vessels of interest.

The Global Hawk is designed to search an area the size of Illinois in 24 hours. It can fly as high as 65,000 feet, has a maximum range of 10,000 nautical miles and can stay aloft for up to 35 hours. It transmits its sensor data via satellite to a ground station for analysis.

During the upcoming experiments, the Global Hawks will feed their imagery and electronic intelligence via commercial satellite to the GHMD operations center. From there, the data will be sent to users in the fleet.

The JEFX ’06 will involve moving the Global Hawks and their launch and recovery elements to an operating site on the West Coast, Twomey said. The mission-control element will remain 3,000 miles away at Patuxent River, linked to the UAVs by satellite.

The GHMD experiments are for the Navy to gain experience at long-range surveillance using unmanned aircraft. But the lessons learned will influence the Broad-Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) system, a long-range surveillance UAV proposed to augment the Navy’s forthcoming P-8A Multimission Maritime Aircraft that is scheduled to replace the P-3C Orion.

The Global Hawk is one of three declared proposals to fill the BAMS role, the others being the Lockheed Martin/General Atomics Mariner — a derivative of the successful RQ-1 Predator — and an unmanned version of General Dynamics’ Gulfstream 450 business jet.

The initial operational capability for the BAMS has slid to 2013, a three-year delay proposed in the “Fiscal Year 2006 Future Years Defense Plan.” The delay “actually fits in perfectly,” Morgan said, as the Navy plans to use data from the GHMD and Air Force operational experience with the Global Hawk to write a better request for proposal in 2006. “It’s almost a perfect world for an acquisition manager.”

The Coast Guard is not participating in the GHMD, but the service also has a requirement for high-altitude/high-endurance UAVs for broad-area surveillance. Integrated Coast Guard Systems, the joint venture between Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin to manage the service’s Deepwater procurement program, has proposed the Global Hawk fulfill that requirement, according to a Coast Guard source. The original Deepwater implementation plan called for fielding the UAV in 2016, but the timing of initial deployments will hinge on the maturity of the technology in future years.

“We will certainly share information with the Coast Guard should they want it,” Morgan said. Coast Guard use of a high-altitude UAV would resemble the mission profiles planned for JEFX ’06.

The Navy has not determined the long-term fate of the two Global Hawks being purchased for the demonstrations. Twomey said the UAVs are not funded for deployment, but could be deployed operationally in much the same fashion as the advanced concept models of the Air Force Global Hawks that were dispatched to reconnoiter Afghanistan and Iraq. The Navy wants to accrue experience with the Global Hawk before considering deployments for real-world operations.

The total cost of the GHMD is estimated at $198 million: $113 million for the basic systems and $85 million for development and modifications.