The Navy’s effort to develop an aircraft carrier based unmanned combat aircraft system (UCAS) is absolutely critical to the service, but the Navy must demonstrate that the system can be safely integrated onto a ship and it must have the support of congress and the Pentagon for UCAS to survive, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA).
The Navy’s Unmanned Combat Air System-Demonstrator (UCAS-D) and the eventual follow-on, Navy (N)-UCAS, face a rough road, according to CSBA’s Tom Ehrhard and Robert Work.
Ehrhard and Work recently published a 240-page study examining the need for UCAS.
“There is a high degree of skepticism,” Work told reporters at a briefing at CSBA in Washington, D.C.
“Carrier air wings have never ever been a fan of this,” he added.
In August 2007 the Navy awarded Northrop Grumman [NOC] a $1 billion contract to build two UCAS demonstrators. The goal of the program is to demonstrate a carrier landing by 2013, Work noted.
If the demonstration effort is successful, and backers of UCAS-D are able to convince skeptics that a carrier-based unmanned system is feasible, the Navy could initially pursue an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance unmanned aircraft.
There has been some discussion, however, of adding N-UCAS to the mix of potential follow-ons to the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet out in the 2025 time frame. That effort is dubbed F/A-XX, Work noted.
“I don’t think Tom and I would say that in 2025 it’s a sure bet that a UCAS would be able to duplicate everything a manned combat system would be able to do,” Work said. “But there are certain things a UCAS can do infinitely better than a manned system.”
And moving N-UCAS that far to the right could doom the program, he added.
“Now the Navy is talking about the earliest they would put an unmanned system on a carrier deck is 2025,” he said. “We believe that this suggest the Navy is not truly sold on this system.”
More to the point, Work said he saw this discussion as the first bureaucratic move to kill the program.
It’s a good idea for the Navy to stick to a demonstration program and technical maturation effort, Work said, to prove the system works, that it can be built for a reasonable cost, that it performs as expected, and more importantly to see what “cool things operators dream up to use this [for] during its test program.”
“I don’t believe it would be good to jump to an operational system,” he added. “It is absolutely important to go through this first stage.”
Work said it is also important to keep an eye on the Program Objective Memorandum (POM)10.
“If [the Navy] keeps the UCAS-D program or if they try to accelerate it, that would be a very good sign. But if they say ‘we don’t really need it until 2025…we probably can move the demonstration to 2018…that billion dollars looks good…’ you know this system is going to suffer defense infanticide,” he explained.
The technical maturation program is also very important, Work added. “Not only do you have to demonstrate that the system can operate safely, you want to give it all of the tools to make it even more capable.”
“At the end of the day, it has to be supported independently by the test community,” Ehrhard said. “This demonstration program is very important to the N-UCAS.”
Ehrhard and Work both pointed out the advantages N-UCAS will bring to the Navy in the ability to provide greater range, persistence, stealth and networking.
“N-UCAS will transform the aircraft carrier, which right now has unlimited global mobility but extremely short tactical reach, into a global long-range and persistent strike system,” Work said. “It has enormous implications for the carrier fleet.”
Current carrier aircraft, such as the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, for example, have a range of upward of 500 nautical miles. N-UCAS would be able to improve upon that range by two to three times, Ehrhard said.
Additionally, the tailless design of Northrop Grumman’s system allows it to have a “much greater level of stealth on all azimuths than a design that looks like F-35,” Ehrhard said.
The F-35 is Lockheed Martin‘s [LMT] Joint Strike Fighter.
“So you are also talking about the ability to not only range these targets but to be operationally effective in this environment,” he added.
Additionally, N-UCAS could remain on station for upward of 40 to 50 hours with refueling, Work noted.
N-UCAS would also contribute to the concept of crisis stability, Ehrhard said.
“When you have a system, for instance, that forces the PRC (Peoples Republic of China) to buy a lot of air defense systems…a very stealthy deep strike system…this contributes to crisis stability in the region,” he explained. “Those are offensive systems they cannot buy. Those are systems they can’t be 100 percent sure of, so their willingness to take offensive action will be diminished because they can never be sure their attack systems on the mainland would be protected. So the U.S. should be pursuing systems that contribute to crisis stability in the region as part of our over-arching strategic approach to defense strategy in the future. The N-UCAS system would be a major move forward in terms of east Asia crisis stability.”
But for all the potential advantages N-UCAS offers, it has received little, if any, support from aviators, Ehrhard said.
“The skepticism is so thick in the naval aviation community. Younger pilots are some of the most skeptical of all,” he added. “If UCAS-D gets dumped, chances of there ever being a N-UCAS program are almost nil.”