Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles, or UCAVs, have a rather sad history in the U.S. military. When the General Atomics RQ-1 Predator proved, in the 1990s, that you could arm a medium-sized surveillance drone with air-to-ground weapons and turn it into an elusive, lethal and relatively cheap hunter-killer, folks in the Pentagon got real excited. They wanted to take that basic concept, throw some money at it and see what happened if you designed a drone from the ground-up to be a killer. Boeing was working on one of these so-called UCAVs, the X-45, for the Air Force. Northrop Grumman, meanwhile, had the X-47, which was beefed up for Navy use. Both programs were joint efforts with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa. Looking to boost economies of scale, in 2003 the Pentagon brought both X-planes into the same program, called Joint-Unmanned Combat Air System. As J-UCAS picked up steam, Darpa relinquished control in 2005 and the military took over. A fly-off was imminent. The future looked bright.
Then, without warning in January 2006, the Air Force dropped out, effectively killing J-UCAS. The service said it had decided to focus money and effort on the new Long-Range Strike program to develop a new (perhaps unmanned) bomber. But folks inside the Boeing X-45 office said that was a load of bull and advanced their theories: that the Air Force was scared that the cheap, smart and lethal UCAVs might threaten the manned Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning fighter and start putting fighter pilots out of business; or that the Air Force was uncomfortable sharing technology with the Navy and letting the sea service call any shots in the UCAVs’ designs. (Navy airplanes have to be considerably bulkier and heavier than Air Force planes in order to survive repeated aircraft carrier launches and recoveries.)
Whatever the reason, the Navy was left to salvage something from J-UCAS. They renamed the program, first to N-UCAS for “Naval” then to UCAS-D for “Demonstration.” And they announced their intention to keep both industry teams in the running. It’s taken an entire year for the Navy to piece UCAS-D together; the request for proposals is due any day now. But whether it will eventually produce a real live combat aircraft is anybody’s guess. Technological hurdles are few – but cultural, fiscal and organizational obstacles abound.
Sources inside the Boeing X-45 program say that the office has been effectively split in two, with some staff still surviving on remaining J-UCAS funds and others spending company money while awaiting the Navy contract. Problem is, these two camps are prohibited from working together, for political reasons. And those residing the viable Navy half of the office are apparently being rather mismanaged – encouraged to do advanced work on X-45 despite the contract and prospects for government money being some months away. That’s risky, especially in light of the tenuous health of Boeing’s other drone programs, which have been stripped of people and money in order to keep UCAS-D going. No word on whether Northrop Grumman is suffering similar in-fighting. Probably not, considering that X-47 has long been Navy-optimized and also bearing in mind the firm’s tremendous success with the RQ-4 Global Hawk drone.
After a bullish decade, aerial drones are getting a reality check. The Pentagon has cast its lot with manned fighters over UCAVs and the Army is cutting in half its portfolio of future airborne drones in order to save cash; meanwhile, the Air Force seems to prefer a manned bomber for the Long-Range Strike mission. But if the Navy stands by UCAS-D, drones’ future just might turn around.
–David Axe, cross-posted at Ares
ALSO:
* Killer Drone Plan Revealed
* Killer Drone Construction Begins
* Killer Drone’s Big Brother
* Killer Drone, Dead; New Bomber Lives
* Who Killed the Killer Drone – and Why?
* Who Killed the Killer Drone? (Redux)
Probably the biggest problem with UCAVs, and why the USAF has backed off from them: They, by definition, need good communication, both to receive and to send.
I seriously doubt that the US will ever field an autonomous UCAV anytime soon, the limits to autonomous weapons in our doctrine are pretty severe because we don’t want skynet/collatoral damage scenarios.
With this restriction, then, UCAVs have a serious problem: They need to receive information from the pilot on the ground and, before getting permission to fire, they need to transmit information.
In a situation like Iraq, this isn’t a problem. The opposition isn’t bothering with widespread jamming and other attacks. Even in Iran it probably would be OK.
Heck, you could strap some hellfires on the Goodyear Blimp and be good with it in Iraq as long as you are flying high enough.
For the Army, this isn’t as big a problem. Much of what the Army would use a UCAV are tactical: there are already troops on the ground nearby, so breaking radio silence/stealth on the UCAV is not a problem.
But for the USAF, its potentially a huge problem: the moment the UCAV sends a message to get confirmation-to-fire, it finds some SAMs heading its way mui pronto.
Hey! re: comments about putting hellfires on so-n-so’s blimps….
yer gettin me riled buddy! I happen to be THE airship expert…. and yeah, you COULD, and, no, you wouldn’t have to fly it high enough….
It is extremely hard to bring down a properly designed airship…..(note I do not say “blimp”)….from any altitude. And they can linger, can carry offensive and defensive weapons, a huge array of surveillance/com gear, and best of all, can carry personnel….thats’ the pilot to make decisions, add in a weapons/electronic co-pilot…and add in a quick response strike squad if you want.
all at less cost than UCAVs’, with international UNREFUELED range, applicable to all branches of the services, and DO-ABLE, right now.
(but once again, note I do not refer to the hated, archaic, cumbersome, limited, fragile, and just generaly FUBAR “blimp”)
(one of these days I’ll have to write up an entire paper on this stuff for Noah)
regards
Nicholas,
I disagree, with certain qualifiers.
Bear in mind that SATCOM arrays are highly directional. Yes, I know about sidelobes. But a good array combinded with spread-spectrum techniques makes interception very difficult.
An intercept network of sufficient capability to guide, or even “cue”, a weapons system would be quite an investment; unless I’m mistaken you’re talking about layer upon layer of receiver sites which would make the infrastructure of a modern cell network look like so many tinkertoys by comparison.
I’m eager to discuss this. Do you see angles left uncovered?
TBV: Signal processing is cheap and getting cheaper. In general, I would not want to be in a position where the other side’s defense scales with Moore’s law and the ability of people to throw up cellphone towers.
Additionally, if I was an exec in Huawei, I’d be seriously looking at developing my next-generation ultra-wideband cellphone/telecom basestation in a way that would also double as a signal monitoring/intercept platform, simply to get the chinese Defense Department to pay for my telecom R&D.
Also, actual INTERCEPTION of the commands is difficult. Might as well be impossible with modern cryptography, so why bother trying?
But thats not what a defender needs. They need traffic analysis: just detecting what is broadcasting where, which is a much simpler problem, and jamming.
Good Post. I enjoyed your commentary.
On related matters, USA Today has recently reported in its Washington Section that the CIA plans to utilize more open sources and blogs in its intelligence work and outsource more of its intelligence software development to commercial contractors in an attempt to re-establish itself as the premiere world intelligence agency.
The “Strategic Intent” is posted on the CIA public web site. Defense Industry Daily further reports that General Electric is gobbling up Smith’s Industries for $4.8B.
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/2007/01/ge-buys-smiths-aerospace-for-48b/index.php
I am a 2 tour Vietnam Veteran who recently retired after 36 years of working in the Defense Industrial Complex on many of the weapons systems being used by our forces as we speak. Let’s look at this for a moment and do our patriotic duty by reading along with the CIA (after all, they have announced they are reading this blog)
1. The new CIA approach comes exactly at the formation of the agency’s new “External Advisory Board”, which consists of the following:
* A former Pentagon Chairman of the Joints Chief who is now a Northrop Grumman Corporation Board Member
* A deposed Chairman of the Board of Hewlett Packard Corporation (HP)
* A Former Deputy Secretary of Defense who now heads up a Washington think tank with Henry Kissinger
2. Northrop Grumman Corporation and Hewlett Packard are two huge government contractors in the Pentagon and CIA custom software development arena. Their combined contracts with the government just for IT are in the multiples of millions. I wonder what the advisory board is filling the CIA’s ear with?
3. Washington “Think Tanks” are fronts for big time lobbies, sophisticated in their operations, claiming non-partisanship, but tremendously influential on K Street. If a lobby cannot buy its way in, why not sit on the advisory board?
4. GE already has the military aircraft jet engine market. In buying Smith’s, it takes one more major defense corporation out of the opposition and further reduces the government’s leverage through competition. GE now joins the other monoliths such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon with tremendous leverage in the $500B +++ per year defense market.
5. Note the synergy that now exists between the Pentagon and the CIA. Note the influence by the major corporations.
6. Also note the balance in your bank account and your aspirations for the generations of the future. Both are going down.
7. The huge Military Industrial Complex (MIC) continues to march. Taxes and national debt will be forced to march straight up the wall to support it. Do you have any “Intelligence†to offer the Pentagon, the CIA and the MIC? For further inspiration please see:
http://www.rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com
Nicholas,
I understand the meaning of “intercept” which you’re referring to, but in this case I’m taling about the ability to *detect* a transmission, not comprehend it.
I think you have a valid point regarding potential dual-use of wireless infrastructure. This still puts an adversary a step behind- assuming said adversary can afford the mountains of hardware such a solution would entail. The adversary is still reacting to our threat. The dection network is hypothetical, but the UCAV is already proven.
Granting your proposition, who might we expect to deploy it? The Chinese or the Russians might be able to pull it off on some scale; can anyone else say the same?
I’m in a poor position to judge, but I like your point about Moore’s Law.
One of the lessons from the recent Israeli/Hezbullah war is the power of signal intelligence to the defender. Admittedly, it was probably sigint of CELLPHONE traffic (which is much easier to intercept and track), but sigint nonetheless.
I’m sure China, Russia, and Iran are all taking those lessons to heart. And, as outlined, if you could also have it serve as your telecom infrastructure, thats a way of getting someone else to foot a lot of your defense bill.
So if I was a US military planner, I’d count on the opponents developing pretty impressive traffic analysis infrastructures, because the bang/buck is damn high. Especially with all the US talk of “Network Centric Warfare”, “systems of systems” and all these other gadgets.
Its not an absolute killer for a UCAV, because you could also treat the UCAV in many ways like a retargetable cruise missile: give it a set of targets to attack and you CAN change it, but you don’t HAVE to communicate with it.
I also think that there is one other big factor (Cynical mode): The navy is run by ship captains. A ship captain would see a UCAV as an extension of his ship, able to project firepower a longer way away. Kinda like a super duper cool cruise missile. Likewise, the army is run by generals, with the army UCAVs just another tool, run by specialists and noncoms.
But the airforce is run by pilots.