Holy Scouting Requirements Batman

Some brilliant reporting from Geoff Fein in Defense Daily, reminding us that warfighter requirements in the 21st Century change assumptions quickly. Just as quickly, the Marines adapt. Wow...

In the past 60 days, the Marine Corps has bought almost 2,000 unmanned air vehicles (UAV) from the Army and Air Force, in response to a warfighters' urgent needs requests, a Navy official said.

In order to quickly get systems to Marines in theater, the Navy and Marine Corps leveraged preexisting systems, Capt. J.R. Brown, program manager, small tactical unmanned aerial systems (STUAS), told Defense Daily Thursday.

"We have close relationships with both the Army and Air Force offices. We work with each other very well. I am very proud of that relationship," he said.

The Marine Corps has put on contract 1,993 air vehicles, Brown said. That number translates into: 13 of AAI Corp.'s Shadow air systems, 467 of AeroVironment's Raven B and 135 of its Wasp UAS, Brown added.

The systems include the air vehicles and ground stations, among other things.

Each Shadow and Wasp system has four air vehicles. The Raven B system has three air vehicles, Brown said.

1,993 air vehicles in 60 days! The concept for use the Navy and Marine Corps have in mind in for these small unmanned systems is the idea of landing the air vehicle on a rooftop, overhang, or some other landed position and leveraging the camera system to transmit video pictures for up to six hours, according to the article.

"And then just when it has enough battery power to get back home, it takes off and flies back home," he said. "It's that perch and stare they are looking at, because the video transfer doesn't draw as much power on the battery. So instead of having the vehicle loiter or hover, you basically shut the engine off and let the video do the work."

How many unmanned aircraft will be required per ship for extending the scouting radius of a surface ship in the next war? Every AEGIS battleship needs this capability, because the necessity to reach out and inspect ships closely before sending manpower, or putting one of our expensive battleships too close to a dangerous vessel exists today. However, these very small UAVs may not be the right platform to support ships at sea. We note Boeing's ScanEagle is much bigger and has better endurance. More importantly, it is better suited to operate in the more difficult weather conditions one might find flying at sea. The ScanEagle is expensive though.

The addition of new technologies, like the example of UAVs able to increase the survalliance reach of any individual ship, is a good example of the small evolutionary changes that all new ships need to be intended to support. I'm specifically thinking about platforms like the DDG-51, which must be able to support 24/7 ScanEagle operations as part of daily naval operations in the future, and that could potentially mean 3-4 ScanEagles per ship in wartime.

If the Navy is unable, or unwilling to put UAVs on every ship, then we must revisit the mothership. While the LCS will carry a few of these unmanned vehicles, the LCS is also becoming too expensive to justify its lack of firepower in large numbers under the current concept of operations. How would the Navy move massive numbers of unmanned vehicles into a theater to support naval operations of many ships over a large area? The answer is motherships, a large HVU capable of deploying all types of unmanned systems including large numbers of aviation vehicles that can cover enormous distances in support of regionally distributed forces.

Finally, this capability is a warfighter requirement derived from the Marines during a time of war. One would think, given the investment we are seeing here, that this means we have yet another Marine requirement that will be added to the mix of Marine capabilities necessary to be deployed from the sea. With weight requirements increasing for amphibious ships, and now new capability requirements continuing to add up, the Marines are facing a potential necessity to change the MEU, or at minimum increase the size of the amphibious ship force. There are options, and they do not have to be as expensive as one might think.

Where is the "UAV Jeep Carrier" concept? One would think that by now someone in the NWC, NPS, or even Proceedings would have an engineering idea to discuss the necessity of a Jeep carrier platform for these emerging air vehicle technologies. Essentially, the ability to launch and recover Reapers (as an example) from the sea, support large numbers of smaller UAVs, and generally be an aircraft carrier with pilots who are more joystick than jock seems like a no brainer. Give them brown shoes if you must, but a cheap flight deck and hanger specific to supporting unmanned vehicles need not be built to high survivability because the increased range of unmanned vehicles should allow these ships to operate well behind the defenses of task forces in major war, and stay out of dangers path in small war.

In other words, apply a concept for survivability that makes sense. Instead of building ships that operate close to shore with low survivability requirements, why not build ships that can operate even further from the shore with the lower requirements? Reduce survivability requirements and costs on the ships less likely to be easily engaged by the enemy, not the ships most likely to be engaged by an enemy.

What function would a ship like this serve in the battle line? Seems like the necessity to make the sea transparent in places where shore facilities don't exist for that function would be a good start. Admiral Ulrich's concept makes use of the coast lines of willing partners, but doesn't that leave a requirement for those ungoverned spaces where transparency is only enabled by a similar capability supporte at sea? A "UAV Jeep Carrier" concept is one of several ways that role can be filled.