UAV’s at a Crossroad
The UK armed forces are stumbling towards yet another incoherent and wasteful equipment programme with absolutely no vision or integration between the three services.
At the small scale the Army is using Desert Hawk but this doesn’t have any maritime application so the RN is experimenting with the Scan Eagle.
In the middle, we are operating Predators and Hermes 450 whilst funding Mantis.The Army’s Hermes 450 derived Watchkeeper needs runways so will likely operate from exactly the same airhead as Predator.
The latest long range stealthy UCAV demonstrator, Taranis, looks very smart but can it operate from CVF?
One might think that given Watchkeeper will be operating in complex airspace it would need an air minded organisation to operate it, like the RAF or Army Air Corps, oh no, let’s give it to the Royal Artillery, with a bit on Intelligence Corps on top.
Have any RN vessels been fitted with a Watchkeeper control station, is there a common information dissemination system across the three services or is there a common control system.
What do you think.
It is a mess.
All three services have similar requirements but seem content to pull in different directions, duplicate effort and fritter away money like it was going out of fashion.
Anyone would think the MoD had plenty of it
Whilst all this is happening the most important thing to hit the US and in turn UK, unmanned aircraft space is to get rid of those confusing and pesky acronyms and replace them with another.
Remember everyone, its not UAV or even UAS anymore.
The new acronym in town is Remotely Piloted Air System (RPAS) because we wouldn’t anyone forgetting there was a bona fide pilot in charge, not an operator.
We can’t even get our acronyms, let alone ducks, in a line.
The UK needs a comprehensive, tri service review of its needs in this area and a coherent implementation plan backed up with a strong implementation programme that crushes completely and definitively any stovepiped or unnecessary empires.
Before we even look at equipment we must build a common information infrastructure, what DII(F) is supposed to be and a set of common control and exploitation architectures. Some of this is already in the system but progress seems painfully slow. RPAS/UAV can create a massive amount of data and turning this into actionable knowledge at the point of use is the main challenge we face and is not just a technology problem because however these systems evolve, they will still need human intelligence to understand and act on that information. Other ISR systems like Sentinel produce a product that needs a completely separate and un integrated control and exploitation architecture.
Project DABINET (or whatever it is called this week) is supposed to support this integration.
At the heart and start of any roadmap is the forthcoming defence review that will amongst many things, seek to look into a crystal ball and answer the burning question of what will be happening tomorrow?
Do we for example try and maintain a full spectrum of capabilities or do we concentrate on a limited set of possibilities?
What role will industrial and political concerns play, this is absolutely key because it informs our equipment choices?
The whole thing is a very difficult balancing act.
Any roadmap would likely include a range of platforms that could snap into a common information backbone and as far as possible, exploit a control architecture that makes maximum use of common sensors, control systems and handling equipment. We must get away from a service oriented stovepipe mentality, interoperability is the key to success and cost efficiency, it should be possible for an RAF ground crew to launch a system, hand over control to an RN ship where it would exploit the information and pass it onto a ground team ashore who combine the information with a feed from an orbiting Sentinel and cue a GMLRS onto the target, all this should be seamless.
There is no doubt the unmanned or remotely piloted systems have and will continue to have a profound impact on the way we conduct operations.
The US Army have just release a very sensible and comprehensive UAV strategy document, here, that seems absolutely rooted in reality and includes a range of mission requirements, timelines, formation sizes and equipment roadmaps.
The mission requirements listed are reconnaissance & surveillance, security, attack (close combat, interdiction, strike, target identification), command/control/communication, combat support and interestingly, sustainment.
The document describes classes of system
- Class 1, typically hand launched employed at the small unit level and only ISR payloads
- Class 2, medium sized catapult launched to support brigade level and lower operations and only ISR payloads
- Class 3, medium sized, operating at medium altitude and medium to long endurance. ISR and weapon payload
- Class 4, large systems, able to operate at high altitude and for extended duration. ISR and weapon payload
- Class 5, large systems with specialised missions and payloads
Cost, logistic footprint and operating area requirements generally increase as one climbs the class ladder.
Again, this seems a sensible and pragmatic approach that could accommodate some of the more combat offensive oriented missions. However good the document is, it doesn’t include any significant mention of the USN, USAF and USMC, even the US hasn’t fully embraced the purple view.
The difference between the UK and US is that we have to look at this with a tri service head on because anything else is simply unaffordable.
The RAF Scavenger programme is seeking to get something into service in the 2015 – 2018 timeframe and of course the various manufacturers are lining up, Northrop Grumman are offering the Global Hawk with a pay per use model and may also offer an airship design. A Mantis derived design would be the obvious contender though.
Although I was rather mocking about the term RPAS, behind it is a serious issue, autonomy is a desirable objective but implementing it in an operational context with complex Rules of Engagement and air environments is extremely difficult and fraught with problems. Autonomy should not be a goal in itself but something that can be implemented independently of the designs used and introduced slowly.
The UK is making good progress in RPAS/UAV design, operation in no segregated airspace is slowly progressing, the Autonomous Systems Technology Related Airborne Evaluation and Assessment (Astraea) programme has now secured the £30 million in funding needed to launch its delayed second phase and BAe continue to churn out competent looking designs.
Going against the grain, we have a good lead and with a concerted effort may be able to create not only an excellent set of capabilities but in the MALE and UCAV area, achieve significant export success. This may seem rather BAe and RAF centric but this is not intentional, I am just recognising the growth areas where the UK can apply its technological lead and sovereign capabilities.
If I had to have a high level think on overall direction it would be as follows
- Obtain an ‘off the shelf’ Class 1 device, there are hundreds on the market, especially the quad rotor designs that are cheap as chips, not connected to any central information infrastructure (an advantage at this level) and can be treated as semi disposable. These should be deployed at sub unit level and not in specialised units
- Withdraw Desert Hawk when operations cease in Afghanistan
- Invest in the Boeing Scan Eagle for Class 2, it can be used on land and sea and is a mature and very well established design with plenty of growth potential
- Transfer operations of UAV, Scan Eagle, to Army Air Corps and RN
- Retain the investment in Watchkeeper infrastructure (the bulk of the costs) but cancel the air vehicle, retain the Hermes 450 as an interim solution until operations in Afghanistan finish
- Invest in common ground station
- Rapidly bring a production version of Mantis into service and aggressively market, consider partnership with France but no other nations
- Seriously scale back investment in JCA, sub 40 airframes and take Taranis concept to a production variant but absolutely 110% make sure it is navalised and can operate from CVF without catapults. It might even be possible to extend the Harrier life and skip a generation, going straight to a Taranis type design circa 2025 as the Tornado is retired (bit radical that one though!)
- Any Taranis derived system must be able to operate at high level and high altitude in the Global Hawk type role and fulfil other strike oriented missions. This might be a big ask of a single airframe so we might also consider a two track approach, Taranis for the deep strike/ISR Tornado role and one of the many high endurance systems, including airships, that seem to be just coming to fruition.
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As an update for anyone who’s interested, Zephyr has apparently been airborne for 7 days! smashing the previous endurance record and will remain up there for the rest of next week before coming down
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10664362
Dominic – US has X45 program as well as Pegasus – Wikipedia has a good page on Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_Combat_Air_Vehicle
good point mark if they can make a joint nbc regt they can remove thumbs from ar$e and sort this out, all 3 services need to be involved, and as you said i think this has evolved beyond RA. Maybe involve FAC in some way, the US link in their UAV’s into the longbow system, so an apache can engage targets sighted by the UAV which several Km’s ahead.
Why on earth does the Royal Artillery operate the UAS/UAVs. Whilst originally they used pheonix for target spotting for their artillery, the new UAV/UAS is in no way used for artillery. They are an ISTAR asset and should be used by a dedicated Air and Int unit such as the RAF / Int or the AAC/ Int. There should be an overiding single, be it tri service, UAV unit dedicated to tactical and strategic level UAV ISTAR gathering and controlled and co ordinated as such rather than a mas duplication of efforts.
Do the americans have anything like Taranis?
Theres bugger all on BAE’s website, but it looks like a scaled down stealth version of the Vulcan.
The closest American design I can find is the Pegasus, which admitadly could be described in simialr terms, but has a quarter of the max take off weight.
c,
i like that however they do avoid giving out how much payload it can take, and the dropping 20k worries me. do you lose the ability to “power out” if it gets hairy!
The other thing that the hydrogen powered UAV has it uses 2 engines from a ford ranger pick up so easy to find cheap spares and an ability to be fixed by your average vehicle mechanic, not a rocket scientist!!!
I believe Taranis is key, we have sunk a lot of money on complementary demonstrator programs the result of which is Taranis itself, we have a competitive advantage in this realm unsurpassed by any except the obvious exception; the US.
I know its is only a demonstrator, but it could be a production aircraft by 2018, replacing the tornado’s as they draw down.
Although carrier operation was never considered for Taranis itself, it would be easily possible to make an airframe capable of working off of a stovl carrier.
The carriers are notionally supposed to operate 3x 12 JCA aircraft for strike and cap missions.
I would like to see a buy of eighty F35b to equip six squadrons, with an attrition and deep maintenance reserve of eight aircraft.
I would like to see a similar number of Taranis come into service by 2020, primarily to equip the RAF.
By 2025 I would like to see a carrier capable Taranis variant brought into joint service with the RAF/RN whereby one of three F35b carrier squadrons would be replaced with this new RPAS for the carrier strike role.
We could sell a lot of them, to exactly the countries that want to buy F35b now.
on the persistence front, no need to wait untill 2011, QinetiQ’s Zephyr 7 looks like its going to take a shot at 2 weeks!! continuous flight in the coming days.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10629313
hmmm….Joint Force UAS maybe
just slightly off thread, this popped up today with flight trials in 2011 that’s closer than the EADS vehicle and obviously using hydrogen is a new slant.
http://www.gizmag.com/boeing-phantom-eye-unmanned-airborne-system/15706/
Well, why land.
As soon as its unmanned it don’t need the toilet or feeding!!
Maybe that sounds far fetched but already in the sub 20kg range we have 24 hour solutions.
Joined up thinking is needed indeed.
Clearly there needs to be more joined up thinking. We have three separate services so there is bound to be some overlap and duplication from time to time. A common sence approach needs to be taken. This is can only come about when we have a single Armed Forces budget and joint rather than competitive procurement.
Why get rid of Watchkeeper when we have already spent out? The Hermes 450 have been put to good use and Watchkeeper should be better. Just because it requires and airfield doesn’t mean the RAF should have it. It’s a tactical asset.
My question about Mantis is does it offer significantly different capability to Predator ?(Sovereign capability I suppose).
I would certainly be prepared to cooperate with anyone if a true common requirement is established but I suspect France might go for an EADS product.
Taranis really only technology demonstrator. The idea of a production Mantis entering service in the 2020s is a bit of fantasy. Do we even want it? There is a lot of thinking to be done before UCAVs start replacing strike aircraft. Why not just stick with stand off missiles.
I would like to see a rugged UAV with sufficient range ad payload that has an STOL performance, able to land and take off from rough strips or the decks of a carrier or LPD without cats/traps.
The Scaneagle is a fantastic solution and is probably future proof to a certain degree. Its relatively small size is becoming less of an issue as sensor weight reduces while capability increases.
Standardized ground control stations that comply with STANAG 4586 really ought to be everywhere now.
To a large extent the data gathered from UAS and how it is disseminated is a much bigger issue than the UAS itself. The Collect as I heard it called needs to get to places fast and in a standard format.
The seeming absence of the Navy from the Waddington UAS symposium was noticeable. It was a step forward that local industry was being addressed and told what was needed.
We arent the worlds only Harrier operator.
Ours might be ready to fall out of the sky, but 824 of them were built, the last of them were remanufactured in 2003.
If we limit usage to keeping say, 40-50 pilots carrier capable, shouldnt we be able to scavenge enough airframes?
My first thoughts are id this turns out to be as good as they say and assuming it is not cancelled, then this makes the F35 even less attractive. So we should buy Rafale (ideally upgraded to take Typhoon bits, namely engine, as it is the air defence of the fleet that we would be lacking. The Taranis can do the first/deep strike role better that any F35 A,B or C.
Jed, I might agree with you on the A160 or Camcopter but my desire for commonality would still be the same whatever piece of kit was chosen
We have to stop thinking in a single service manner, with Watchkeeper and Scavenger the Army and RAF will be imaging the same piece of ground yet completely duplicated, no common analysis or control yet likely operating from the same location. Watchkeeper needs a runway, so does Predator. We have turned the Hermes 450 into a ridiculously over complex airframe (folding undercarriage to preserve an uninterrupted sensor view for example) stuffed it so full of stuff that it is a wheezy overweight system with very little growth potential. It is fitted with a ground scanning radar that will be used the same way as that in Predator and even Sentinel.
The RN has yet to come to the party so no ships, even Albion and Bulwark have any facilities for Wathckeeper or Sentinel or anything else.
This has to stop
I picked on Scan Eagle because it is in service now, great performance, has a range of sensors, can be operated from the ground or ships or even launched from aircraft.
Having said that, it is simple so all the work we have done on Watchkeeper, Mantis, Taranis and the others should be channeled into a set of equipment programmes that take the high technology we have and maximise them for export and utility.
LOL – I am the other way round, I don’t agree with much of it EXCEPT withdraw from F35…!!!
Actually that is not fair, all comments about standardised dissemination infrastructure, common ground stations etc is absolute common sense, which is why we are not doing it of course….
Where I really disagree is ruthless commonality for the sake of it. For example, the Scheibel CamCopter VTOL RPV (mini-helicopter) maybe better for RN use. Similarly in the next weight class MQ8 FireScout or the A160 Hummingbird would be better – actually VTOL might be better for the Army Air Corps too !
Finally I really, really don’t agree with you on the Mantis and the Taranis, but that’s because as I have stated many times before, I think the Government has given up the ability to have a “defence industrial” strategy because it does not fund UK armed forces to the appropriate levels. Thus there are plenty of off the shelf systems, already in service, or a lot closer to being so, than the Mantis. If BAe can sell it, and make profits for their mostly U.S. shareholders, then thats just fine – but don’t push into the RAF just cause its “British”.
Same with Taranis – I know your being deliberately contentious on that point, but its a demonstrator, its a long, long way from being an operationally capable replacement for the Tornado, and I don’t think it has any capability to operate from a carrier because its never been a requirement during its development program (but I could be wrong on that one).
It is a possibility. As I said if we were to go for Taranis in both Carrier and land strike roles, F35 could be reduced, but I wouldn’t go as far down as 40. We’d basically be the first nation on the planet to make the majority of our strike force unmanned. I would suggest 80 as a more rounded figure, which is still a cut of about 60 jets.
An alternative would be to aim for a 2020 ISD and reduce Tornado numbers 4-5 years early to save some costs.
And with all the aggressive marketing of this product we should be doing, some exports might mean that we don’t need to save quite so much on the cost front for the programme because it could actually generate a little revenue.
As another question, is it easier to make a UCAV carrier capable and more importantly able to take off and land without CATOBAR gear. I know weight is reduced by lack of a pilot and that the aircraft can also handle much higher G forces for the same reason, but that can only be taken advantage of if the engine can accelerate fast enough on the deck and do the same for deceleration as it lands. It may be an insurmountable task. In which case Taranis would have to wait until the carriers mid-life to operate from it. However it should still definitely be used in the land based strike role.
I wonder how easy it would be to base Taranis/a derivative/another UCAV around the F136 with lift fan for a STOVL UCAV?
Good point Grim, I was just trying to keep the costs down f the overall package and thought that robbing the JCA programme might be a reasonable approach
I agreed with all of that right up to your suggestion that we should get rid of most of the F35 purchase and try and extend the lives of Harriers well beyond any reasonable amount. These birds are old and tired now, extending them another 7 years beyond their final OSD is silly. At least i’d say buy around 60 F35′s that give some leeway for Taranis development to full carrier operable spec. and also give the carriers enough F35s for CAP missions etc.
That way Taranis can continue to come in at full spec. without a massive rush, I’d aim for an ISD of around 2020 – 2025 as a major part of the Tornado replacement as you suggest but with some F35s available in that role as well, hence the number of at least 60, 80 being better.