Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Armada?
By John A. Tirpak Nov. 1, 2005
Mushrooming Programs
“If it’s big enough to hold a man, our analysis says to go ahead and
put a man in it,” Hoffman said. That point of view is not driven by
white-scarf mentality, he said, but by the cost trade-offs when a
UAS reaches the size of a comparable manned vehicle.
The roadmap discards the term UAV in favor of UAS because such
platforms must be connected to other elements for control and
management as well as the dissemination of their intelligence
“take.” Now in its third iteration, the roadmap for the first time
discusses “near-space” aircraft.
First, they say, UASes have matured to the point where they are no
longer to be considered for “niche missions” but can be applied
across the range of military activities. “Instead of asking, ‘Can we
find a mission for this [UAS]?’ one will ask, ‘Why are we still doing
this mission with a human?’?” the authors say.
Varied Solutions
“Do NOT,” the authors warn in capital letters, “make a [UAS] and
then find a mission for it … [or] design a low observable aircraft
and then try to figure out how to make it do a strike or
suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) mission.”
The final theme is that UASes “have the potential to solve a wide
variety of difficult problems that may be unaffordable by trying to
find solutions with traditionally larger platforms.” In other words, a
UAS solution will be preferred automatically over the creation of a
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large new system.
The study adds: “As for inculcating a fighter pilot’s training and
experience into a robot brain, the equivalent of Top Gun school for
tomorrow’s J-UCAS will consist of a postflight download in
seconds.”
Bandwidth Bottleneck
Power plants for future UASes will vary in power and complexity as
much as the aircraft themselves. The roadmap suggests
investment in a wide variety of propulsion mechanisms, ranging
from scramjets and fuel cells to “reciprocating chemical muscles,
beamed power, and even nuclear isotopes.” Photovoltaic (solar
power) systems and reduced fuel consumption power plants,
which can extend endurance and range 100 percent, are targeted
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for special attention.
A significant goal (and design driver) will be to cut the cost per
payload pound that UASes can carry. Currently, it costs about
$8,000 per pound for an average UAS to carry sensors. By
comparison, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter cost per payload pound is
$7,300. On the J-UCAS, the goal is $5,500 per payload pound, and
the long-term goal is to reduce the cost to $1,800 per payload
pound across the UAS fleet.
Hoffman pointed out that UASes are made more costly and
complex because of the need for “encrypted comms,” or
unjammable communications with the aircraft. “You have to make
sure only you can control it,” he observed, “especially when it’s
armed.”
Echoing the roadmap, Hoffman also noted that it has not been
figured out yet how to safely deconflict what could be hundreds or
even thousands of UASes buzzing around a battlefield. It will add
cost “to add systems that will keep them from hitting things … or
running into each other.”
In one of his last interviews as Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. John P.
Jumper in August said of the manned/unmanned question, “It’s
hard to say what the right ratios are going to be.” He anticipates
that long-range strike will be a natural UAS mission, as will ISR.
He’s reluctant to give the air-to-air fighter mission, for example, to
a UAS until it can be shown that it “doesn’t give up any of the
quality we now have by having the greatest trained pilots in the
world.”
“That’s the great thing about our system: Once it’s proven that it
can do the work and it competes, then we’ll make those transitions
if it’s appropriate.”
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