By Ann Roosevelt
A Defense Department acquisition strategy review next month for the Army’s Sky Warrior unmanned aerial system (UAS), will likely decide to baseline the platform across the department, according to officials.
Sky Warrior is produced by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GAAS).
“We’re on track to brief our acquisition strategy out this January to Mr. Young, and expect to get that approved at that time,” Tim Owings, Unmanned Aircraft Systems deputy project manager, said at a Dec. 9 media roundtable. “One of the things that has been decided is that the MQ-1C, or Sky Warrior configuration, will be the baseline for the services.”
The Army and Air Force continue to work other issues under the direction of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, on common initiatives, such as common payloads and common datalinks and ways to cooperate better on ground control station technologies or interfaces, he said at the Army Aviation Association of America Unmanned Aircraft Systems Symposium in Virginia.
“We already procure payloads from the same vendor, but we have a fundamentally different requirement,” Owings said.
The issue is being examined from two perspectives. The Joint Staff is reviewing requirements to ensure the two services should have a common requirement. From the acquisition side, the Army is reviewing what it would take to drive to complete commonality in the case of the payloads and in the case of the datalink. The reviews will play out over the next couple of months.
Earlier this year, DoD declared both Predator and Sky Warrior ACAT 1D programs, meaning program decisions are approved at the highest level: the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. That forced the Army to revise its acquisition strategy to account for different activities. The new strategy that outlines such things as milestone decision dates, when testing will occur and what will be tested is now in staffing for briefing in January, Owings said.
Warrior prime contractor GAAS “has a tremendous history of providing a very high quality product,” Col. Gregory Gonzalez, project manager, UAS, said. “Hardware has never been an issue.”
However, some software development and predictive capabilities can be improved, Gonzalez said. “We are working, as the project management office, very closely with them and they’re very cooperative in improving those processes and we’re very confident that shortly they will make the changes that need to be made.”
Key to the Warrior acquisition strategy is to evolve the system and spiral in capabilities as quickly as possible, Owings said. “In order to do that we’ve created Quick Reaction Capability systems. The first of those QRC will be deployed in July. Soldiers just began training on it. A second QRC will be deployed in May 2010.”
QRCs are essentially the same as a Block 1 system with less hardware, basically four vehicles compared to the full company’s 12 vehicles, he said.
Gonzalez said QRCs are funded through the Rapid Acquisition Authority, not program of record money. QRCs bridge the gap between the initial fielding of pre-production Sky Warrior Block 0 and Warrior Alphas and the program of record capabilities. By fielding the two QRC platoons, “we give the field an upgraded capability over what they have now but just slightly less than the program of record capability that we’ll start fielding with our first unit equipped in 2011,” Gonzalez said. The first QRC will have less capability than the second QRC. Everytime something goes in the field, it’s improved.”
Owings said Sky Warrior is the next logical capability increment for the Army. “It’s a substantial increase over anything else that we fly today and certainly a substantial increase over the basic Predator configuration that we procured early in the war.”