In Demand

The number of unmanned aircraft deployed by U.S. forces has grown exponentially, and the nation’s combatant commanders want even more

By OTTO KREISHER, Special Correspondent

The prototype Cormorant is an immersible, unmanned aircraft (UA) designed for the launch, recovery and relaunch from an SSGN ballistic-missile submarine. With rocket-boosted takeoff, a tri-mode sensor and armaments, the 9,000-pound multimission Cormorant, teamed with a stealthy SSGN, would provide future commanders with a “disruptive capability to support future joint operations,” according to a new Pentagon report.

The experimental Long Gun is more a winged missile than a UA. Fitted with a tri-mode sensor and a laser spot-targeting device, it would be launched from a canister to search for targets to ranges of 1,800 kilometers. Twelve feet in length and weighing 720 pounds, the long-endurance aircraft would attack or return to base if no target is found.

The operational Neptune, designed for special operations missions, is carried in a case about the size of a card table that transforms into a pneumatic launcher. Powered by a 15-horsepower engine, the 80-pound aircraft carries infrared or color video sensors, and can be launched from small vessels and recovered in open water.

These and dozens of other UA being developed or deployed illustrate why unmanned aircraft comprise one of the U.S. military’s fastest-growing technologies. Military units from special operations forces to submarines and major surface combatants are attracted by their diversity and application to a wide range of missions.

The military has experimented with UA since World War I, when the Navy developed an unmanned seaplane. In World War II, the Army Air Corps fielded the Aphrodite, an old B-17 that was filled with explosives and flown to altitude by a pilot, who then bailed out, according to the Global Security website. A second B-17 guided the unmanned plane to its target.

The Navy’s Vietnam-era Dash was fitted with torpedoes and a television camera, and used to target supply barges in Vietnam’s waterways. In the 1991 Gulf War, U.S. forces deployed a few UA, such as the Pointer and Pioneer, for various reconnaissance missions. Since then, the number and type of UA being developed or deployed has expanded exponentially.

As of September 2004, 20 types of coalition UA, large and small, have flown more than 100,000 hours over Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon report said. A cover letter that accompanies the report notes that the nation’s nine combatant commanders are requesting UA in ever-greater numbers.

The armed forces, including the Coast Guard, are responding with investments in growing fleets of UA, ranging from toy-like craft costing a few thousand dollars to full-size airplanes with multimillion-dollar price tags.

Most UA have been single-service programs, often developed with little consideration to redundancy or how they would fit into the joint fight. The challenge ahead is to bring greater coordination and synergy to the development and use of UA by the services. To achieve that end, four senior Pentagon officials, including Stephen A. Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, have released a comprehensive 214-page report, the “Unmanned Aircraft Systems Roadmap, 2005-2030,” to guide the work on unmanned air systems for the next 25 years. It is the latest of several UA roadmaps, which are issued about every two years.

Noting the substantially increased use of UA systems (UAS) since the start of the war on terrorism in 2001, the officials said in their cover letter that “the overarching goal of this roadmap is to guide the Department toward a logical, systematic migration of UAS mission capabilities focused on the most urgent warfighter needs.”

The roadmap established nine broad goals “to achieve key [UAS] capabilities” and assigned responsibility for each to various Pentagon organizations. For example, the Navy, Air Force and Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) are to pursue the development and operational assessment of a UA to suppress enemy air defenses and perform other strike and intelligence missions in high threat environments. The Joint Unmanned Combat Aircraft System is being developed for those missions, and two contractors, Northrop Grumman and Boeing, are building versions of it for a fly-off competition in 2008.

Another goal given to the four Pentagon services and OSD is to improve UA capabilities in adverse weather as a means of improving the availability and mission effectiveness rates of UA.

The roadmap also set a goal of developing and fielding “reliable propulsion alternatives to gasoline-powered engines,” with an emphasis on shifting to heavy fuel engines as part of the drive to a single military fuel.

Another key goal is to develop policies, standards and procedures “that enable safe, timely, routine access by UA to controlled and uncontrolled airspace.” That would include coordinating with the Federal Aviation Administration on procedures for operating UA in unrestricted airspace comparable to those of manned aircraft. That also requires developing the capability for UA to “see” and autonomously avoid other aircraft.

The roadmap contains a long list of past and existing UA and a dazzling array of future systems, in addition to the Cormorant, Long Gun and Neptune. These range from small, hand-launched, battery-powered aircraft that can be carried in a backpack, such as the Marines’ Dragon Eye, to the large, turboprop-powered Predator B being acquired by the Air Force and possibly by the Navy, in a modified version called Mariner. The huge Global Hawk is in use by the Air Force and on order by the Navy for testing.

Most of the existing or proposed UA are conventional fixed-wing aircraft, but there are a number of rotary wing, or tiltrotor models under development. Those include the Fire Scout drone helicopter developed for the Marines but now being bought by the Army for its Future Combat System and by the Navy for the Littoral Combat Ships. The Coast Guard is developing the tiltrotor Eagle Eye for a variety of missions.

The SnowGoose, first deployed in January, is a parafoil guided by a Global Positioning System device that is launched from a cargo aircraft at altitudes up to 25,000 feet. Specially designed to dispense leaflets for psychological warfare or deliver small supply bundles to special operations forces, the SnowGoose also can perform aerial surveillance or communications relay missions.

The Office of Naval Research is testing the Silver Fox for ship security and harbor patrol missions. It is about 5 feet in length, has an endurance of eight hours and is designed to control four other aircraft simultaneously.

The roadmap also lists several unmanned airships, or blimps, including the Navy’s Advanced Airship Flying Laboratory, a prototype to improve airship technologies such as surveillance sensors. The service also wants better bow thrusters to improve control of blimps at slow speeds, thereby reducing crew requirements.

The Marine Corps’ Airborne Re-Transmission System, is a tethered aerostat for communications relay fitted with simple, highly reliable transponders and a fiber-optic cable that can provide connectivity within 68 nautical miles.

These and other UA would perform an ever-increasing number of missions, ranging from the familiar to the exotic. UA already provide “over-the-hill” reconnaissance for small ground units, long-duration communications relay and maritime patrol, which is the mission of the Navy’s Broad Area Maritime Surveillance program. It is centered on a UA and has been delayed until the next decade.

The roadmap also suggested that future UA would serve as airborne tankers and transports to carry cargo and passengers. Other missions could include the real time pinpointing of sea mines in surf zones, a capability that should become available by 2020, given anticipated improvements in information processing speeds.

The Pentagon also anticipates that the U.S. military will develop the ability to detect targets under trees and identify individuals from a distance of four nautical miles.

The development of these capabilities will require new technologies. To fashion better airframes, for example, the roadmap encourages the services to look beyond the current composite materials to “transgenetic biopolymers,” manmade substances that possess twice the tensile strength of steel but are 25 percent lighter than carbon composites.

Looking beyond planned improvements in existing sensors, the roadmap projects a number of future technologies that would add dramatic new capabilities. Those include multispectral/hyperspectral imagery, which would not only provide greater detail but could detect chemical attacks, and the UHF/VHF foliage penetrator, a dual-band radar that could find enemy equipment or troops hidden under trees or camouflage.

Another key technology described in the roadmap is better propulsion systems, through improvements in existing methods to provide more power at lower weight and fuel consumption, and with entirely new power sources, such as fuel cells and photovoltaic devices that generate power by conversion of radiant energy.

As UAS sensors become more capable, the communications systems that carry the increased amount of information to the commanders and troops who need it also must improve, the roadmap noted. Improvements in datalink speed may not be able to keep up with the increased amount of sensor data. But the roadmap predicts that “eventually, onboard processing power will outstrip datalink capabilities and allow UA to relay the results of their data to the ground,” reducing the volume of information transmitted.

And perhaps the overarching requirement for the future is to bring a greater degree of interoperability and jointness to this rapidly growing field, the document said. The Pentagon is committed to curtailing the rapidly increasing cost of UA by increasing standardization, improving reliability, cutting the current high crash rate, and improving training for operators and maintainers.

However, the increasing utilization of UA foretells of increasing overall costs. In the 1990s, the military spent approximately $3 billion for UAS research and development, procurement and operations. The six-year future defense plan projects total spending of $17.4 billion. The military’s inventory is expected to grow from 250 last year to 1,400 by 2015, not counting the smallest systems, called mini and micro UA, the report states.

The document said top Pentagon officials issued the roadmap as “strong guidance” in cross-program areas such as development of standards and other interoperability solutions. But the roadmap “neither authorizes specific UA nor prioritizes the requirements,” which it acknowledges are the responsibilities of the services and the Joint Requirements Oversight Council.

Cambone and other officials maintain that during operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, “unmanned aircraft have transformed the current battlespace with innovative tactics, techniques and procedures,” and established precedents for the road ahead.

In the future, the roadmap suggested, “instead of asking, ‘can we find a mission for this UA?’ one should ask, ‘why are we still doing this mission with a human?’”