Navy Wants UCAV Squadron By 2025
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Thursday, 13 of March , 2008 at 2:46 am
Here’s the scenario:
An aggressive regional power with robust integrated air defenses, ballistic/cruise missiles, and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and chemical WMD capabilities has attacked a U.S. ally. Offshore, a Navy Carrier Strike Group prosecutes enemy submarine and surface forces. Nearby countries refuse basing rights to U.S. forces, and the closest secure bases are thousands of miles distant. From the first hours of the conflict, ultra-long endurance Navy UCAV’s hold the entire battlespace perpetually at risk, identifying emergent targets and denying the enemy the sanctuary of strategic depth. Networking with other joint sensors and shooters, Navy UCAV assets detect, track and identify enemy air defenses, surface and submarine forces, missile launchers, C2 nodes, and WMD sites. Joint commanders working with the Navy fleet and carrier strike group assets prioritize targets and assign them to persistently orbiting unmanned aerial systems. The Navy UCAV’s flexible payload enables battle managers to match the right weapon to each target, while its onboard sensors update the targeting picture through weapon release and damage assessment.
The US Navy wants this all to be a reality by 2025. According to DefenseTech.org, the Navy is actively seeking competitive prototypes of an unmanned combat air vehicle to replace F/A-18s on aircraft carriers, which is a fairly major step. There are lots of upsides, though, including lower costs, increased time on station, higher survivability, and lower risk. Northrop Grumman is clearly in the lead when it comes to UCAVs after beating out Boeing’s X-45 program to win a $635 million development contract from the Navy, and it seems like the focus is probably going to remain on Northrop Grumman’s X-47, with other companies contracting out some of the construction. The X-47B is a strike fighter sized high subsonic unmanned carrier based aircraft with a combat radius of 1500 miles, a ferry radius of 3500 miles, and a payload of 4500lbs (weapons or sensors) carried internally. The first flight of a full-sized demonstrator platform is set for November of 2009, with carrier trials to be completed 3 years later. More info, pics, and video, after the jump.
It seems to me that if we’re planning to have an operational unmanned combat squadron by 2025, that could open the door for some hot drone-on-drone action, despite the Pentagon’s assertion that we wouldn’t be seeing a fully autonomous combat system before 2032 at the earliest. Dyke Weatherington, deputy director for the Pentagon’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Task Force, said last year that “the requirement of [offensive or defensive air combat] is a fully autonomous system, we don’t have that level of autonomy yet and frankly in the roadmap that will take many years to get to.” I dunno about you, but a UCAV squadron by 2025 is a pretty good start… Perhaps he’s worried that there won’t be any opposition, but Russia and Israel are both hard at work at UCAVs and autonomous command systems. Even if our 2025 UCAV squadron doesn’t have any international competition, of course there are going to be some mock dogfights, right? If for no other reason than to test the relative merits of various pieces of software?
I may be talking out of my ass here, knowing virtually nothing about aerial combat… But it does seem to me that the hardest parts about designing an operational UCAV have already been tackled. It’s not the hardware, it’s the software, and bots have already demonstrated their ability to take off, navigate, land, and even refuel without human intervention. I imagine (again, huge potential for ass-talkage here) that the actual combat intelligence is potentially less complicated, if for no other reason than many aspects of it are already operational in manned fighter aircraft and unmanned missile systems, and many systems have progressed to the point where they are able to locate, identify, and track enemy units and need little more than a human to push the “ok” button to engage.
BTW, if you like the X-47 pics, there are more (available in wallpaper sizes) here.
[ Defense Tech ]
Category: Military
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