CDR Salamander: UAS

Showing posts with label UAS. Show all posts

Sunday, January 23, 2022

Big Navy vs. Reconnaissance & Strike-Capable Drones - on Midrats

We live in an era where in the blink of an eye we've gone from flip-phones to smart phones with the capabilities of both supercomputers a generation ago and entire movie studios in your back pocket. In that same time frame, what happened to the promised integration and operational utilization of aircraft carrier based drones - or Unmanned Aircraft Systems, or whatever we are calling them this week?

This Sunday we are going to dive deep in to the topic and problem with our guests Trevor Phillips-Levine, Noah Spataro, and Andrew Tenbusch.

We will use as the starting point for our conversation their recent article in War on the Rocks, "Winged Luddites: Aviators are the Biggest Threat to Carrier Aviation."

Col. Noah “Spool” Spataro currently serves on the Joint Staff tackling Joint All Domain Command and Control demonstration and assessment challenges. His 23 years of service includes remotely piloted aircraft systems squadron command, aviation command and control, and unmanned aircraft systems capability development.

Lt. Cmdr. Trevor “Mrs.” Phillips-Levine is an F/A-18 Super Hornet naval aviator and department head. He previously served in Naval Special Warfare as a fires support officer and joint terminal attack controller, working with various unmanned strike and reconnaissance platforms.

Lt. Cmdr. Andrew “Kramer” Tenbusch is an F/A-18 Super Hornet naval flight officer and student at the U.S. Naval War College’s College of Naval Command and Staff. He is a graduate of the Navy Fighter Weapons School and previously served as a carrier air wing integration instructor at the Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center. Additionally, he was a mentor and advisor to the United Kingdom Carrier Strike Group’s inaugural staff, focusing on collective training design and delivery across the remit of carrier strike group mission sets.

The positions expressed here are those of the authors and do not represent those of the Department of Defense or any part of the U.S. government.

Join us live if you can, but it not, you can get the show later by subscribing to the podcast. If you use iTunes, you can add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes button at the main showpage - or you can just click here. You can find us on almost all your most popular podcast aggregators as well.

Monday, September 23, 2019

The MQ-25A Imperative

As many of you noticed in a post earlier this month on the future airwing, the MQ-25A is almost here - and it is about time.

Via Ben Werner at USNINews;

Boeing conducted the first flight of its prototype unmanned aerial refueling aircraft on Thursday, testing its handling and the Navy’s ability to fast-track a long-stalled program.

The MQ-25A Stingray “T1” test airframe flew for two hours, flying in and out of MidAmerica Airport, located next to Scott Air Force Base outside of St. Louis. Boeing and Navy officials described the weather as perfect for flying as the T1 gathered performance data for Boeing and the Navy to review.

While a lot are itchy and a bit flustered that we are only going to use it for tanking (for now), it remains the correct move for two reasons; 1) It is a basic mission that will enable us to get used to operating and maintaining a CVN UAS so we can expand later in to other missions; 2) We have a gaping maw of a requirement for organic tanking.

It has been clear for a very long time how stupid it was to get rid of organic tanking. I've said from the start and maintain my position, that buddy-tanking does not count and is a false economy.

Facts, as usual, are on my side;

The Navy’s mission for carrier-based UAVs has evolved during the past decade. Initially, the UAVs were considered to augment a carrier-based strike capability and to provide surveillance missions. Instead, the Navy narrowed its focus to refueling as a way to free up more F/A-18E/F Super Hornets for strike missions.

“Stingrays can provide persistent aerial refueling that’s going to extend the range and operational capability of the carrier air wing and the CSG, and it’s going to improve the efficiency by increasing the number of F-18s available for the strike fighter mission,” Reed said.

Currently, between 20 and 30 percent of an air wing’s Super Hornet fleet is dedicated to aerial refueling operations. The introduction of the MQ-25A Stingray will free up those Super Hornets for strike missions. The MQ-25A will delivery up to 15,000 pounds of fuel at 500 nautical miles.

No one is bringing back the S-3Bs and we may get lucky that a real naval conflict does not come up in the next decade ... so let's get that tanking ability back ... and then get to work on the FA-XX.

Hat tip Blake.

Monday, September 16, 2019

Drones and a New Age of Economic Terrorism

5% of the world’s oil production is knocked out … and days-on no one has any evidence who and from where.

The assumption – and I think it is a good one – was that the Yemeni Houthi rebels launched the attack using either drones or a combination of drones and missiles.

What we don’t know right now is what kind of drones and/or other weapons were used, where they were launched from, or really if it were actual Houthi who did it.

Whatever delivery platform(s) they used, you have to give a professional nod to those who carried out the operation. What an incredible bang for the buck.

This is not a “new” threat. Attacks against economic targets are as old as history – but to do it effectively usually took overt displays of nation-state military forces … or mercenary/piracy that were easy to track back to their benefactors. No more.

What to do?

1. Well, to start with, we need to “learn to code.” The threat is from the air, and we are not ready for it. I am reminded here one of the interesting accidents in the development of the Israeli Gabriel ASCM. When they were trying to develop a seeker head, they made a math error. As a result, they “over-engineered” their seeker head making it incredibly accurate for its time.

We have great AAW defensive sensors weapons – many we’ve exported to Saudi Arabia … but they are not designed to find and defeat this threat from small RCS and slow “drones” – especially if they come in low launched from nearby locations. You can transport drones for these type operations in a backpack on the small end, to the trunk of a car on the more capable end. There are some EW issues – but none that we’ll discuss on this net – but there are ways around it (you need to pony up some consulting fees for this advice). In any event; advantage to the aggressor, as we’ve seen.

We and the Saudis have good kit, but it is not optimal for this threat.

2. Diversity and disaggregation is the key. If you think the Saudi’s have a lot of refining eggs in a few baskets, you should look at the USA. That and our electrical grid…but I’ll try to focus on the topic at hand.

The cult of efficiency and NIMBYism resulted it a lot of critical capacity packed in to just a few locations. We are one natural or man-made disaster from having problems that will make the Saudi attack look small.

There are also military vulnerabilities to this threat.

Case in point – look at this pic.

Now, instead of oil storage tanks - here's your oldie-but-goodie - think ships lined up at Christmas in Norfolk. Think subs at Kings Bay or New London.

You get the idea. And no, you don't have to sink anything ... you just have to make a point.

“We’ve” been chatting about this threat for a very long time, and the technology is reaching the point of where the chatting needs to move towards action.

In the attack, you don’t need a lot of money. You don’t need a big footprint; all you need is will and imagination. Do it right, and no one will even know how to retaliate.

In the defense, you do need a lot of money. You need more real estate. You need leadership, vision, and persistence. Do it right, and you will still be vulnerable, but not to the point of strategic risk.

There is a very good chance that this is simply an opening of a new type of global threat. I’ve had my Red Hat on too long this AM, I’m going to take it off – I’m scaring myself.

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

Your Next Airwing

For those who didn't make it to Tailhook this year, here's a peek on the evolution of the airwing over the next decade.

Of note, you see UAS coming online and you can see the slow sunset of the Hornet.

Speaking of which ... I look forward to seeing more about the F/A-XX. We were supposed to see more this Summer, but I didn't see it anywhere. The earlier Boeing tandem cockpit concept looked very promising. Hopefully Mabus's foolish, "must be unmanned" fever dream is as dead as his maintenance legacy, but we'll see.

Remember; you can make a manned unmanned ... but the other way notsomuch.

Moar please.

Hat tip XBrad.

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Tomorrow's Airwing Needs to be my Father's Airwing

This will do well as a companion piece to Bryan's guest-post yesterday. Take some time and read all of David Larter's Page-1 story in the May 6th Defense News, What's Killing the US Navy's Air Wing.

First, look at these glorious flight decks full of tools for all sorts of jobs - just 14-years apart from 1967 to 1981;

Now, today's deck full of lawn-darts and auxiliaries;

... and then ponder this pull-quote;

The carrier air wing of the future will also need to be able to hunt submarines (serving as a replacement for the S-3 Viking aircraft), provide surveillance and targeting, and destroy ships and land targets with standoff weapons, all while fighting at nearly double the range of today’s air wing, according to the study, which was led by retired submarine officer and analyst Bryan Clark.

If the Navy wants to counter China’s anti-ship cruise missiles and increasing naval capabilities, it must resurrect the Cold War-era “outer-air battle” concept, which focused on longer-range aircraft to counter Russia’s bombers. However, instead of fighting at 200-plus nautical miles, the air wing will have to fight at 1,000 nautical miles, the study found.

“The air wing of the future is going to have to be focused less on attacking terrorist training camps and huts in Syria, and more focused on killing ships and submarines at sea — dealing with naval capabilities and island-based littoral capabilities,” Clark said in a telephone interview. “Those are the challenges: Range and the mission set is changing.”

You don't know what you once had until you lose it, eh? We did it by choice.

It has always been about range, something we discussed here for well over a decade - but that lost the argument for ... still trying to figure that out, though I have ideas.

We have wasted so much time with people who have other priories ... still trying to figure out what they are, though I have ideas ... than investing decision making power with those focused on making sure we can project power ashore without being inshore.

Some smart initial steps are looking right;

In other words, the entire air wing, both the range at which it can fight and the missions it is set up to execute, must be completely overhauled. That’s a big ask that can’t be answered overnight. It starts with committing to the MQ-25 Stingray, Clark said, referring to the unmanned tanker aircraft under development by Boeing following an $805 million contract award last year for the first four aircraft.

Build it. Get it to the fleet. Let our Navy work with it ... they'll help you find out how to make it better ... but let's get it to the fleet and start. Would be nice to ditch the "MQ" and get some answers on the "AQ" and "RQ" once we get the KQ working correctly.

We've also addressed over the years the much delayed F/A-XX and how important it needs to be. Range needs to be top of the spectrum. In my alternative universe we would have two programs going - one on the "F" side and one on the "A" side - other generations have done it - but we don't seem to have that luxury. At least the arc is bending my way;

“So now the focus should be on the F/A-XX. If you really want range, that has to be the platform you are shooting for,” Work said. “Because with the Navy buying the F-35Cs, and the Marine [Corps] buying the F-35Bs, and the Navy buying the Block III Super Hornet, you are not going to be able to afford two or three programs. So the F/A-XX is the one you need to focus on. And if the analysis shows you need range, that points to unmanned.”

The next statement of the obvious is most welcome. When the peer battle comes, we will not own the EW spectrum. We won't have unchallenged access to satellite or terrestrial bandwidth. We will need to be in the fight anyway;

But the study also called for retaining a manned fighter for command-and-control capabilities in environments where communications are jammed or nonexistent, Clark said.

“There is still going to be a need for manned fighters to do close-air support, but mostly to do command and control of other platforms that are perhaps unmanned inside a comms-denied environment,” Clark said. “So you send some loitering missiles or you send UCAVs up forward, you would expect them to be managed by someone who is able to maintain comms with them. That would be a human in a fighter that is able to remain close enough to them to stay in comms.”

...and here is where things go off the rails a bit;

For that, Clark points to a retooled F-35 fighter jet, one that switches out internal payload space for fuel.

“The F-35 folks, when you talk to them about what it would take to make it a longer-range command-and-control aircraft, they’re pretty optimistic because most of the challenge in doing these kinds of changes is in the software,” Clark said. “And the software isn’t dramatically different because it’s really just changing how it manages the fuel, not any of the other functions.”

The F-35 is a single seat aircraft. To do the above you need at least a 2-seater - the human mind can only do so much and fly at the same time. We need to look hard at F/A-XX's scalability.

“The near-term fix is to get more tankers,” he added. “The mid-term fix is to start investing in a longer-range aircraft. Because the idea of having to have 12 or so tankers just so your fighters can get to 1,000 miles means you have to have a lot of your deck and hanger space being taken up by tankers and not strike aircraft. This way you can use the tankers you’ve developed for other missions — either strike or [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] on their own — or free up that deck space for other aircraft.”

Welcome to the party everyone.

Heavy fighters, they're a thing. We are a couple of decades from needing our own SU-34-like capability.

Get to work.

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

The Dark and Costly Underside of Unmanned Systems

Don't buy all the hype about drones that you hear. Yes, they are good and useful, but they are not the secret sauce many are selling.

They have downsides. One is that they are actually very expensive to maintain and operate - especially for extended periods.

I know, you hear they save money in manning ... but for the set of missions they do, you have to look at the overall costs. They Germans have, and are throwing in the towel;

Germany is looking to sell a secondhand surveillance drone that has cost the country more than 700 million euros ($823 million) to Canada — without many core components it needs to fly.

A defense ministry reply to lawmakers from the opposition Left Party states that Germany has decided to "begin concrete negotiations with Canada for the sale of the Euro Hawk aircraft, two ground stations and possibly certain spare parts."
...
Germany ordered the Northrop Grumman Global Hawk variant in 2000 to use for long-distance reconnaissance, but later canceled the order because of skyrocketing costs and revelations that the prototype wouldn't be certified to fly in Europe. Then-Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere acknowledged in 2013 that the drone was a write-off, telling lawmakers it was better to have a "horrible end than a horror without end."

Hey ... we could have used that attitude early on in the LCS program, we might have a useful frigate in production by now ... but I digress;

"The question is what a buyer would do with such a gutted aircraft," said Thomas Wiegold, a German journalist who runs the defense website Augen Geradeaus . "Without GPS navigation and in particular without flight control systems, the drone would hardly be able to fly."

Andrej Hunko, one of the Left Party lawmakers who submitted questions to the government, said the drone now only has "scrap value."

"The sale will therefore recoup at best a small portion of the tax money spent," he said. "I expect the loss will amount to several hundred million euros (dollars)."

At least the Germans understand the concept of sunk cost - they now know that not all trendy fashions are actually useful for what you really need to invest your funds in.

Of note, the Euro Hawk is just a variant of the Global Hawk which is what the Navy's BAMS is based off of.

So ...

Monday, October 01, 2018

Keep your eye on the sky and move indoors

The socialist president of Venezuela almost became Victim-0 this summer, and I am not sure we really know how to deal with what is not just coming, but already here.

What started in Iraq with quad-copter dropping small explosives with badminton shuttlecocks glued to the end are long gone.

This has been a long time coming. There was some silly British movie in the late-70s that had people using RC aircraft to not just smuggle something I don't recall, but also countering those RC aircraft with other RC aircraft. It's been almost 4-decades, but I still remember it.

It is helpful to remember that "RC aircraft" is just a less sexy way of saying "drone" which is what a quad-copter is which is just an entry level UAS.

Though their Achilles heal is their vulnerable control links - that can be fixed even for recreational COTS. This event will ensure it will be fixed next time someone goes for the king.

As Jeremy Kryt at The Daily Beast tells us, the day of the drone assassin has arrived;

In November of 2017, The Daily Beast broke the story of the first illegally weaponized drone found in Mexico. It was a relatively primitive version that sported a homemade shrapnel bomb and was found in the back of a vehicle belonging to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), in the state of Guanajuato.

Then, about a month ago, evidence surfaced that CJNG had already advanced their drone designs considerably.

On July 10, the house of a Mexican public safety officer was targeted in a drone attack in Tecate, Baja California—a border city in the larger Tijuana-San Diego municipality that falls within CJNG’s established territory.

According to a new report co-authored by Dr. Robert Bunker, of the U.S. Army War College, the Tecate drone managed to drop its payload ISIS-style on the officer’s residence. Although the attack was apparently meant as a warning—since the grenades still had their safety pins intact—it also showed a clear step up in cartel-drone enhancement, including a second unmanned aircraft that conducted reconnaissance on site.

“Of the two drones, the Tecate one has far better lethality than the one in Guanajuato—we are comparing military grade grenades versus an IED,” Bunker told The Daily Beast.

“This is still an evolving global threat,” Bunker said. “The next firebreak, now that earlier ones have recently been broken in Mexico and Venezuela... would be weaponized drone incidents taking place in either Western Europe or in the United States. You can’t get much closer to the U.S. than Tecate, Mexico for an incident like this.”

Michel agreed with Bunker about the international risk posed by evolving drone technology.

“We're definitely going to see more attacks of this kind, be they assassination attempts against a specific leader or indiscriminate terrorist attacks,” Michel said. “Part of the appeal of drones for terrorists groups is that they make great cable news fodder. Showing that you have weaponized drones is an excellent way to draw attention to your organization and to incite fear.”

Unfortunately, anti-drone jamming devices lag far behind UAV offensive capabilities, Michel explained.

“In a nutshell, no single counter-drone technology is one hundred-percent effective against one hundred percent of drones in one hundred percent of cases,” he said. “And that’s before you even get to the countermeasures to the countermeasures. There are already drones in development that would be entirely resistant to the kinds of jamming systems reportedly used to protect Maduro.”

While everyone has the quad-copter top of mind as a delivery platform (a delivery platform BTW that is slow & fragile enough to be defeated close in via hard kill with any 3.5" 12-ga loaded with B to T sized shot), it is not the platform that concerns me.

No, there are much more frightening delivery devices out there you can buy off the shelf with little care. With a few modifications, if any - here is your threat. Old school RC aircraft, upgraded and reinforced.

You don't need a huge payload, just enough. Here is your entering argument to ponder. MotionRC's F-86 with a 80mm 12-blade EDF engine. Electric, so a lot more quiet and quicker to get in the air compared to wet-fuel mini-jets. There are larger and faster ones than this example. Just an entering argument here.

Ponder.

Now ponder that power plant(s) in a bespoke design to carry ordnance on a one-way flight.

Sunday, August 05, 2018

AI, Machine Learning and Their Future Role in Military Operations, with Ali Crawford on Midrats

The future has been with us for quite awhile now, but the intersection of advance manufacturing, Moore's Law, and data storage are bringing to the front capabilities that for decades were found only in science fiction.

Autonomous and varying degrees of human-robot teaming, artificial intelligence, robotics, and machine learning are not just growing parts of the modern economy, with each passing year they become more and more integrated with military operations.

What future capabilities can we expect and how will we work through the ethical and legal complications that will come with them?

Our guest to discuss these and related topics this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern will be Ali Crawford.

Ali Crawford Ali has an M.A. from the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce where she focused on diplomacy, intelligence, cyber policy, and cyber warfare. She tweets at @ali_craw.

Join us live if you can, but if you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio or Stitcher.

If you use iTunes, you can add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes button at the main showpage - or you can just click here.

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

The Drone Economy of Scale

If you think some are being overly alarmist about the fusion of AI, drones, and cheap manufacturing - then you might be wrong.

More over at USNIBlog.

Come give it a read.

Monday, March 19, 2018

The USAF Already Shifted to a Drone Future?

In an interesting article about the differences between Navy and USAF fighter pilots in Business Insider, I came across this nugget;

It must also be noted that starting a few years ago, the Air Force has made more drone pilots than fighter pilots annually - something those with long-term career aspirations should keep in mind.

Wait, what?

Well, did a little digging and it looks like the singularity took place last year;

The U.S. Air Force now has more jobs for MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones than any other type of pilot position, the head of Air Education and Training Command said last week.
...
MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper family of remotely piloted aircraft are slated to have more than 1,000 pilot operators, according to fiscal 2017 statistics provided to Military.com on Tuesday. By comparison, the highest numbers in any other aircraft are 889 airmen piloting the C-17 Globemaster III and 803 flying the F-16 Fighting Falcon, said Lt. Col. Tracy Bunko, spokeswoman for AETC.

Interesting.

Not sure where to take this datapoint from here - but I don't see this trend moving anytime soon.

Monday, March 12, 2018

Slovene Psychoanalytic Philosophy vs. the Chinese Porcupine's Quills

Uncertainty.

In training, equipping and manning your Navy for the next war, the further you get from the last time you fought the kind of war you will fight next, the more uncertainty there is on how it will be fought.

You can guess, you can surmise, you can do your best to wargame and benchmark similar wars – or vignettes of war – to help guide you on the path towards making sure the young men and women you will call on in the future to perform violence on your behalf will be given what they need to win.

War is always a dark room. Regardless of how much you prepare, you will quickly find that you have things you don’t need, things you have some but not enough of, other things you need now that you had no idea would be that important, or the most infuriatingly those things you need but foolishly (in hindsight) left behind.

For the entirety of human history, this has been true. The only thing that is certain at the outbreak of war is uncertainty.

That is why in peace you need an open and aggressive exchange of ideas. You need brutal honesty. You need rigorous testing with an eye to victory at war. When you become focused on other things, you only amplify the error differential that grows each year between what you think you will need and what you will really need.

As a natural part of this process, in peace you are always looking for that bit you don’t know you need – that “known unknown.”

That search puts some people over their skis when it comes to technology. DDG-1000 and LCS along with other legacies of the Age of Transformationalism that peaked 15-yrs ago are perfect examples of this.

Sadly, the recognition of this excessive dismissal of technology risk seems to have spawned a few unnecessary reactions, reactions that are encouraged by some who see such reaction as a benefit towards the defense of the empires they have built to protect their legacy ricebowls.

This dynamic is best seen in the very clunky progress – or lack of it – in the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) area.

UAS are not new; they date back well over half a century. Advances in materials, communications, computing, and the promise of AI in the last decade have been an accelerant enabling UAS to perform missions not previously realistic UAS mission sets.

There is a broad spectrum of opinion of UAS, from the “must have a man in the loop at all times” school to the “let loose the AI gods of war” school.

At least today, I am somewhere in the middle. Using the template of UAS in the strike role as a reusable TLAM, I think we should be aggressively moving towards strike options. UAS as a tanker? A good first step so we can work out the kinks of having these in the airwing.

Over the last six months I’ve detected a drift. If anything, a bit of a retreat. If nothing, we seem to be intentionally backing away from experimentation – forward leaning but clear-eyed experimentation that can help us mitigate that error that comes from the “known unknowns.”

Now that we’ve wandered in to Rumsfeldland with knowns and unknowns, I’d like to bring up a follow-on to that famous press conference from a decade and a half ago – the concept of “unknown knowns.”

From Errol Morris’s 2014 documentary, “The Unknown Knowns”

Confused? It’s ok, - most people are. Here are Rumsfeld’s two definitions not quite in alignment with each other - but they work;

“Things that you possibly may know, that you don’t know you know.”

“Things that you think you know, that it turns out that you did not.”

-Donald Rumsfeld

Either way, the whole concept is illuminating. Here’s another take on it from Slovenian Psychoanalytic philosopher Slavoj Žižek;

…the things we don't know that we know-which is precisely, the Freudian unconscious, the "knowledge which doesn't know itself," as Lacan used to say.

There is a lot more than engineering, science, money, and politics in getting UAS right. No one has the right answer. There are some – usually on the extremes – who have the wrong answer, but the right answer is out there.

The only way to get to the right answer is that creative friction that comes from open, direct, and aggressive discussion about needs, wants, strengths, and weaknesses. Priorities and prejudices. Motivations and desires.

When it comes to UAS, Jerry Hendrix stepped up to the plate today in National Review to bring this discussion back above the natsec ambient noise.

In a surprise visit towards the end of yesterday’s Midrats, Jerry gave us a heads up about the article coming out, and I’ve been pondering it through the day and decided to push out the post I was going to do today to the right and instead fold it in to some broader broodings I was having over the weekend outlined above.

Jerry goes a bit further and faster than my preferences with UAS, but his points are solid and well deserve a full reading and considerations.

Here’s a few pull quotes for you to ponder;

...to fight and win within the emerging great-power competition. This new environment, at last recognized in President Trump’s National Security Strategy and the Secretary of Defense’s National Defense Strategy, requires the Navy to strike enemy capitals and other vital centers of gravity from range, but the Navy’s decision to bypass a carrier-based strike asset, and now even to push off its acquisition of an unmanned mission tanker, suggest that it is not taking A2AD great-power competition seriously. Its decisions place the future relevance of the entire maritime service, at least as it is presently composed, at risk.

Green eye-shade decisions drift from complacency spiced up with a lot of arrogance and an environment where professional excellence was seen as victory over "competing" community platforms are the primary cause of our retreat from not just defense in depth, but attack from a distance.

These were all deliberate decisions. Professionals who should know better gleefully danced on the grave of the VA community and then the F-14 community. There is a lot of Beltway squid ink to explain why, but the best explanations are best explained by marriage counselors, psychologists, and high school Vice Principals.

The short picked-on kid wound up on top of a mountain made on the bodies of those who used to tease him - and others who were easy pickings. We went from the slightly insecure, "No slack in light attack," to "All we have is light attack because we killed and ate the rest."

And so, on our Hornet and Super Hornet filled, monoculture airwings, we have this;

The average unrefueled range of the aircraft embarked on super carriers during the 1950s was over 1,200 miles, allowing those aircraft to conduct missions deep into the Soviet Union, but somehow in the post–Cold War generation the Navy forgot the lessons of World War II and, by retiring long-range aircraft such as the F-14 Tomcat, A-6 Intruder, and A-3 Skywarrior without analogous replacements, allowed the average strike range of the aircraft embarked on the super carriers to decline to less than 500 miles, pulling the super carriers back into the threat range of those who would make themselves enemies of the United States.

Like the decision to abandon the heavy fighter/strike "Super Tomcat" and organic tanking, we once again find ourselves willfully blinding ourselves to our weakness.

We are setting ourselves up to repeat the fears during the Guadalcanal campaign of the safety of our only viable carrier in the area, USS Saratoga (CV-3). We will save her by making her combat ineffective, damaged, or exhausted for much of the early campaign - letting the battle be fought by the rest of the fleet at a freighting cost in men and ships.

For some reason, despite the obvious statement of importance assigned to great-power competition and balancing capabilities and capacity in the face of A2AD challenges in recent strategic documents, the Navy has assigned little priority to the development and production of the MQ-25 aircraft, which is placed at the far end of the current five-year budget and not expected to reach initi,al operational capability until 2026. Perhaps this is because the original impetus for the mission-tanker program, the need to relieve pressure on the Super Hornet inventory, has been relieved by congressional decisions to restart the FA-18E/F production line. In fact, the Navy seems so comfortable with its fighter-attack-aircraft inventory that it has made the decision to retire or “strike” 140 older aircraft ahead of schedule to avoid the higher costs associated with maintaining them. Perhaps the Navy is unsure of whether it needs an unmanned tanker at all, or perhaps it wishes to forestall its final commitment to the program until it has come to a better understanding of its future requirements.

Carriers are what they have always been - your most effective offensive platform and your hardest platform to defend. Time-distance can amplify what is good or bad depending on what you put on that carrier.

The real strategic challenge facing the Navy is a requirement for penetrating deep strike from the carrier deck. The Navy needs a new aircraft to perform this mission. Given the mission profile, a range of 1,000 to 1,500 miles out and then back, the density of A2AD surface-to-air defenses, and the ten-hour-plus flight duration, the aircraft should probably be unmanned. The Navy should not forget the lessons of World War II that Admirals Mitscher and McCain wrote down after they lost multiple carriers while operating well inside Japan’s then-advanced A2AD environment. At $12.9 billion apiece, our modern carriers are too dear to the force fiscally and strategically to risk against the current threat.

The Navy would be well served if it were directed to return and review the requirements associated with the UCAS-D program ten years ago and refocus its efforts on creating a new unmanned, all-aspect stealth aircraft that is capable of operating from the carrier deck and hitting targets deep inside enemy territory. If the Navy does not take these steps, it will risk allowing its carrier force and, in fact, its entire accompanying surface fleet, to lapse into strategic irrelevance.

"...ten years ago."

To use a measurement of time I coined three years ago, what is that, something like 2.5 worldwars ago?

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Stack 'em like Cylon Raiders and You Have Something

The manned/unmanned partnership is starting another chapter.

I'm pondering over at USNIBlog.

Come on by ... there are more pictures.

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

The Unmanned Era is Already Here

There is nothing new under the sun, but it does progress across the sky.

Come feed your brain on the topic over at USNIBlog.

Wednesday, October 05, 2016

If you like your AI, I don't know if you can keep your AI

So, think unmanned systems coupled with AI will be the future of full spectrum combat?

Even if it could be - do we really want to build AI that can operate at that level.

I'm asking that question with Sam Harris over at USNIBlog.

Come visit and see what we're flopsweating about.

Monday, August 15, 2016

The Drone Overreach is Nigh

This technology, only a POM away, is the answer to all our problems. If we only invest a bit more and trust this one braintrust, the future will be ours to dominate with fewer units, fewer personnel, less bloodshed, with more power and flexibility. All we need to do in to close our minds and trust our seers of the future who know. They just know, dontchaknow.

What we need to do is to throw away all that oldthink, embrace the Tommorowland of Our Betters, ignore the reality of the conflict and operational reality all around us and focus on the vignette. Focus on the presentation. Focus on our pristine, exquisite, transformational vision of what will be.

We just need to recapitalize, redirect funds, retire oldthink platforms early and hold out hands together is the only way smart, visionary, right thinking, and - ahem - promotable people think. The post-retirement jobs are all going to be here for those who, well, you know. We don't need to get in to specifics about that right now, now do we?

We have seen this movie before. An experienced and slightly world weary matron is once again seduced by the handsome flatterer who tells a story clear to all but the matron that is is little more than the usual over-promise and under-deliver sweet talk that she has fallen for in the past. What follows is a roller coaster of great expectations followed by excuse laden disappointment that in the end leads only to painful recriminations and prenury.

Unmanned systems will continue to provide incremental additional utility if we are smart with our money, humble with our ambitions, and harsh in our evaluations. But no, that is not good enough. Once again we are seeing slick aspirational ideas that we are all supposed to embrace - in spite of the reality of what we see around us tells us what is actually needed, regardless of what the last few conflicts have tried to teach us - indeed, what centuries of solid military experience has taught us.

Like the push for the A-12 prevented us from having a viable and much needed replacement for the capabilities of the A-6, this snake-oil pushing may lead us to miss what unmanned systems have to really offer us by mid-century.

The industry overreach never ends, they never stop. There is always a new group of thinkers who think they have, like those cute teenagers who think they have discovered s3x, discovered something that no one else ever has. They have an insight in to a new way that no one else. They have an idea, a technology, a concept that they are sure - if only everyone trusted them and showed the same enthusiasm they had - will transform, offset, or generation jump their way in to the future where enemies fall away before their dominance while everyone is quickly victorious and makes it home for supper.

Sorry, it never works that way. In spite of a few thousand years of people trying to convince their leaders it really will this time - after all, they are smarter and more insightful than previous generations. It. Never. Works. That. Way.

And so it is for drones, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS), Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) - or whatever we are calling it this FY.

Drones have been with us for decades and technology holds the promise of their greater utility in the future. They key is "promise." We should continue to build a little, test a little, learn a lot - but that isn't good enough for some. Those "some" need to be challenged at every step or they will put us right were we are now; the A-6 to A-12 debacle; the loss or organic tanking; the myopic victory of the Light Attack Mafia that left our multi-billion dollar CVN with decks full of short ranged strike fighters and little more; the LCS who seems to only be able to combat the effort to build a functional fleet; and the white elephant DDG-1000 who, I am willing to bet, has only begun to build on its record of transformationalist under-performance.

Where there are solid, sane, and defensible developments in the drone world, such as the decision to focus the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) program on Carrier-Based Aerial-Refueling System (CBARS) - that doesn't keep the drone good idea fairy from pushing. They will always push as their product is the push.

We're going to unpack something, and it is going to be painful - at least for me. From the 11 July Defense News, retired Air Force Generals John Loh and Ronald Yates ask, "What Next for Drone Warfare?" The executive summary is, "Not this." - but what fun would that be? Let's pull apart the juicy center, a mini-Fisk if you will;

There is no shortage of scenarios well suited to this next generation of combat RPAs. Obviously, their current effectiveness can be improved with all-weather stealth technology, longer endurance, better sensors, larger payloads and connectivity to the global "info-sphere". With these improvements, they can cover targets in other regions where terrorists congregate, such as North Africa, Yemen, Somalia and Southwest Asia. Further, with an optimized vehicle, RPAs can be incorporated into war plans against aggressive nation-state adversaries.

Next-generation RPAs can also be the foundation for enforcing international truces and treaties. They can provide continuous, high-resolution surveillance of important facilities to detect activity that could violate agreements, and immediately strike targets.

Establishing no-fly zones over contested areas is a viable alternative to nation-building. The continuous no-fly zones over Iraq for twelve years after the First Gulf War in 1991 demonstrated their effectiveness as a deterrent to further warfare. No-fly, no-drive zones patrolled with RPAs and manned aircraft can detect and strike any air or ground target, obviate the need for "boots on the ground", and maintain air dominance over the area.

In the same vein, new, optimized RPAs would be the best choice for tracking activity and exerting U.S. influence in hot spots such as the Ukraine, Taiwan Straits, North Korea, Spratley Islands and Central America.

A new fleet does not require new infrastructure. Today's RPAs have capable ground-based flight and mission-control facilities, and robust, jam-resistant data links. Fortunately, programs are already underway to upgrade them such that fielding a new force of RPAs would require little, if any, additional capabilities. And, the global info-sphere of space-borne, networked communications already exists to link RPAs in any region of the world.

Goodness. What a start;

There is no shortage of scenarios well suited to this next generation of combat RPAs.

Of course, if you carefully design your vignette to remove the enemy's vote, assume your dominance of the electromagnetic spectrum and low-Earth orbit, and you can keep the JAG/LEGAD hogtied and ball-gagged in some fan room with two MA's securing the door. No problem.

Obviously, their current effectiveness can be improved with all-weather stealth technology, longer endurance, better sensors, larger payloads and connectivity to the global "info-sphere".

There, in a nutshell, is how we got ACS, A-12, LCS, DDG-1000, FCS etc etc etc - we just assume all challenges away and all good things to happen as a result of just saying so. Additionally, on the back of a cocktail napkin, I think the drone in the above paragraph will need to be something between a G4 and a 737. Good luck hiding that from anyone. It would also help having a vertically challenged contractor in the back room spinning hay in to gold.

With these improvements, they can cover targets in other regions where terrorists congregate, such as North Africa, Yemen, Somalia and Southwest Asia. Further, with an optimized vehicle, RPAs can be incorporated into war plans against aggressive nation-state adversaries.

How many years lost to "making do with what legacy systems we have left after we retire others to capture the cost" will that take? What opportunity cost for those hundreds of millions? What of the conflicts we will be in that - as history tells us - this brave new world capability will be useless in? I assume "optimized" means that whatever you have is covered with fairy dust and will even cure the Heartbreak of Psoriasis?

Next-generation RPAs can also be the foundation for enforcing international truces and treaties. They can provide continuous, high-resolution surveillance of important facilities to detect activity that could violate agreements, and immediately strike targets.

Will someone check the fan room? I am sure I heard the JAG screaming through the ball gag. Also, we are pretty much already doing that, minus the AI implied "immediately." But, yeah.

Establishing no-fly zones over contested areas is a viable alternative to nation-building. The continuous no-fly zones over Iraq for twelve years after the First Gulf War in 1991 demonstrated their effectiveness as a deterrent to further warfare. No-fly, no-drive zones patrolled with RPAs and manned aircraft can detect and strike any air or ground target, obviate the need for "boots on the ground", and maintain air dominance over the area.

Wait, did someone just come out of a coma? I'm sorry, but I don't think the Shia or the Kurds agree all that much and - in the end analysis - that the NFZ in Iraq prevented any conflict. Sure, prevented one unknown possible conflict, but conflict came anyway. Any air or ground target? No need for "boots on the ground?" My Buddha, it is almost as if nothing has happened in the last decade.

In the same vein, new, optimized RPAs would be the best choice for tracking activity and exerting U.S. influence in hot spots such as the Ukraine, Taiwan Straits, North Korea, Spratley Islands and Central America.

"Best choice" under what terms? Define how you exert U.S. influence via something that no one sees, interacts with, or knows what it is doing? That is ISR, not presence of influence operations. Oh, and if they can see or interact with it - then you won't have that asset any more to do your subliminal influencing - or what ever this means.

A new fleet does not require new infrastructure. Today's RPAs have capable ground-based flight and mission-control facilities, and robust, jam-resistant data links. Fortunately, programs are already underway to upgrade them such that fielding a new force of RPAs would require little, if any, additional capabilities.

So, no new hangars? No new facility to support troops and contractors? No new simulators or repair facilities? No new bandwidth requirements?

And, the global info-sphere of space-borne, networked communications already exists to link RPAs in any region of the world.

"Info-sphere" - is that a new term I need to add to BS-Bingo? Will we see that more? Again, I assume that all the bandwidth we are using right now is fully under military control, robust against jamming, can avoid hacking or ASAT, and can operate against a hostile EW environment against peer and near-peer operators? Scaleable and secure? Redundant with ready spares?

Really?

Read it all. It all sounds so clear, easy, and doable - and of course it does. This is the classic problem of choosing the "all assumptions are green" nested best case scenario thinking that has set us back time and time again. This needs to be challenged at every step of the way or we will once again find ourselves passing up "good" evolutionary products that were doable for ethereal "generation jumping" ideas that just never wind up making a shadow, or are produced in such small numbers that they have little use.

Thursday, February 04, 2016

Actually, it is sexy ... and important

Are you upset that unmanned carrier air is only going to do tanking in the immediate future?

Grow up.

I'm pondering over at USNIBlog.

Sunday, December 06, 2015

Law and the Long War, on Midrats

When a nation of laws goes to war, their laws go with them.

In a decade and a half of fighting terrorism, the laws that define our actions overseas and at home have morphed as the threat and strategy for dealing with it has.

From fighting ISIS, operating with and in failed states, dealing with the expanding "refugee crisis," to keeping the balance between security and safety - what has the legal shop been up to?

Our guest for the full hour this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern is returning guest Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., Major General, USAF (Ret.), Professor of the Practice of Law, and Executive Director, Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University.

General Dunlap’s teaching and scholarly writing focus on national security, international law, civil-military relations, cyberwar, airpower, counter-insurgency, military justice, and ethical issues related to the practice of national security law.

Join us live if you can with the usual suspects in the chat room and offer up your questions for our guest, but if you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio.

If you use iTunes, you can add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes button at the main showpage - or you can just click here.

Listen to internet radio with Midrats on Blog Talk Radio

Thursday, July 31, 2014

A friendly reminder about your drone inventory ...

... or UAS, or whatever we are calling them now days.

Craig Whitlock over at WaPo does a great bit of work bringing together various sources to give a detailed account of one of the lesser discussed facts about unmanned aircraft, their loss rate. Required reading here and here.

He wants to use the data to push back on the civilian use of drones - but let's focus on some of his data WRT military drones;

Since the outbreak of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, military drones have malfunctioned in myriad ways, plummeting from the sky because of mechanical breakdowns, human error, bad weather and other reasons, according to more than 50,000 pages of accident investigation reports and other records obtained by The Post under the Freedom of Information Act.

More than 400 large U.S. military drones crashed in major accidents worldwide between Sept. 11, 2001, and December 2013. By reviewing military investigative reports and other records, The Washington Post was able to identify 194 drone crashes that fell into the most severe category: Class A accidents that destroyed the aircraft or caused (under current standards) at least $2 million in damage.

Commercial drone flights are set to become a widespread reality in the United States, starting next year, under a 2012 law passed by Congress. Drone flights by law enforcement agencies and the military, which already occur on a limited basis, are projected to surge.

The documents obtained by The Post detail scores of previously unreported crashes involving remotely controlled aircraft, challenging the federal government’s assurances that drones will be able to fly safely over populated areas and in the same airspace as passenger planes.

Military drones have slammed into homes, farms, runways, highways, waterways and, in one case, an Air Force C-130 Hercules transport plane in midair.

I am a supporter of expanded and measured use of unmanned aircraft as they make sense. We need to make sure we keep in mind their limitations and contain the overly enthusiastic advocates who think they will replace everything.

Loss rate, vulnerability to access denial to satellite navigation and communication links, ease of intercept in non-permissive environments - there are plenty of concerns.

Each year they make more and more sense for use in the toolbox, but we are a long way off - if ever - from them being "the tool."

Monday, April 21, 2014

Because after awhile, people tire of being made the fool

The hard questions often have the most simple answers.

Why do people laugh and grin at our press conferences?

Why are senior leadership met with not-infrequent contempt from members of Congress?

Why do the smartest JOs seem to also be the most cynical?

Well, it is one thing to have trouble costing out a huge warship like the DDG(sic)-1000. You can even cut people some slack with something as complicated as the F-22/35. But ... via Brendan McGarry;

The Navy’s MQ-8 Fire Scout unmanned chopper developed by Northrop Grumman Corp. ... had “critical” cost overruns of more than 50 percent over original projections, according to a summary of the Defense Department’s latest Selected Acquisition Reports.
...
The Navy has already nixed plans to buy 17 more Fire Scouts over the next five years as part of its budget request for fiscal 2015, which begins Oct. 1. The move left the future of the program unclear.

Warren Comer, a spokesman for Falls Church, Va.-based Northrop, said Fire Scout has proven to be “highly successful” program. The company since 2011 has made three significant upgrades to the platform, including endurance, weapons and radar enhancements to support various types of missions, he said.

“These upgrades, originally contracted as separate rapid deployment efforts, are now being incorporated into the baseline program of record,” Comer said in an e-mail. “This allows the Fire Scout system to spend greater time supporting missions with fewer aircraft.”
...
The Navy had planned to buy a total of 126 of the aircraft, including seven prototypes and 119 production models, for an overall cost of $3.47 billion – a 33-percent increase from the original estimate of $2.6 billion, according to the Pentagon report.

The increase in unit cost was “due to an increased requirement for warfighter capabilities of the system and an overall reduction in the total air vehicle quantities being procured,” from 177 to 126, or 51 aircraft, the document states. Specific unit cost figures weren’t given.

The Navy stopped production of the MQ-8B after buying 30 of the aircraft with the Schweizer 333 airframe, according to a separate Pentagon test report from earlier this year. The service had considered switching to the Bell 407 airframe for the MQ-8C, another version of the drone based in part on requirements from U.S. Special Operations Command.

While the service has successfully integrated the Advanced Precision Weapon Kill System, which converts unguided Hydra rockets into precision-guided missiles, on the Fire Scout, “additional sea-based testing is required before the Navy can field a sea-based, weaponized unmanned aerial system,” the test report states.

Nothing says "highly successful program" more than being cancelled.

The whole helo-drone program was a good experiment, but as with many experiments as of late - it was as oversold as the verbiage in your #1 MP LT's FITREP.

Overpromise and underdeliver; never a good business model.