Battle Networks for a UCAS Future

Back on August 18th, Loren Thompson took on the issue of unmanned aircraft. While I agree with Loren Thompson's conclusion, I don't think he made a very compelling argument.

Which brings me, oddly enough, to the subject of unmanned aircraft. Unmanned aircraft like Predator have become emblematic of the way we are fighting wars today. They provide an unblinking eye over hot spots that would be hard to monitor continuously from manned aircraft or satellites, and they have proven remarkably useful in killing terrorists in Pakistan's tribal areas. The bigger unmanned systems like Global Hawk provide extraordinary richness and reach in reconnaissance, while their smaller tactical cousins give combat commanders new ways of understanding local conditions.

However, what many experts fail to grasp is that the value of unmanned systems results largely from the weakness of current adversaries. Because the Taliban and Al Qaeda lack their own air forces, or radars, or surface-to-air missiles, they cannot counter unmanned aircraft effectively. That would not be the case with state-based adversaries such as China and Iran -- or even Serbia -- because unmanned aircraft are intrinsically fragile and largely defenseless. Indeed, they may be the first military planes in history that can be defeated by adversaries flying in unarmed trainers.

He followed up this article, which doesn't make a compelling argument in my opinion, with two blog entries that both make very important points to the unmanned systems debate. The first is that unmanned systems will require air superiority to be successful.

Despite their endurance and versatility, unmanned aircraft are fragile systems that will seldom survive contact with a real enemy. So spending scads of money on them just because the Taliban can't shoot them down probably doesn't help us to prepare for more serious challenges.

...But unmanned aircraft won't survive unless the U.S. has control of the air space in which they operate, so we better stop killing manned aircraft programs before we lose the air dominance that makes other missions possible.

The second point gets to the real issue of turning towards reliance of unmanned systems. This should have been the point of his article, and is the point of this article.

Here is an additional wrinkle on that argument, provided by a retired admiral who is a longtime friend of Lexington.

He points out that command and control for our most capable unmanned aerial systems depends almost exclusively on satellite links subject to interruption in wartime. That's especially true of unmanned systems equipped with munitions such as Reaper, but it is necessarily true for any unmanned aircraft operating beyond the reach of ground or air-based communications. It's great that airmen can operate unmanned surveillance drones over Southwest Asia from secure stateside bases, but what happens if the communication links are jammed or the satellites are destroyed in a war? There doesn't seem to be a backup plan.

The backup plan needs to be the primary, because reliance on satellite networks in major power war for the Navy is the fastest way to failure. I think Loren Thompson is nailing the issue when noting that reliance on unmanned systems is fools gold against a peer competitor right now. There is no way unmanned systems can be expected to work as currently described because the reliance on satellite links in a fight against a capable competitor is not realistic. The challenge for the UCAS isn't going to be landing on an aircraft carrier, it is going to be building a battle network that extends the ranges necessary to keep unmanned systems performing missions when communication is degraded, and satellite links are not available.

Major powers can not only physically take out satellite systems, but cyber warfare is going to make available bandwidth of global satellite networks virtually unavailable in fights against major powers. If unmanned systems is the direction of naval aviation, then not only must the mediums be secured, and C4 must be assured for unmanned combat forces.

Against Al Qaeda, the US controls all the mediums: space, sea, and cyberspace. How much control of the mediums will the US have in a fight against a major power? Control? No way, all three mediums will be in contention. We may be able to deny the enemy control, but securing control for ourselves will not be easily done. Naval forces, and in particularly unmanned combat systems, must be capable of meeting mission obligations when the mediums are being contested.

I noted an article in Defense Daily a few weeks ago noting the tests conducted at Empire Challenge 09. The power of the E-2D and JOINT STARS in the unmanned battle network of the future is only part of the story though, because as ranges are extended the Navy is going to need repeaters on the network to insure communication links in jammed and degraded environments, particularly when satellite links are unavailable. I was thinking of repeaters when I read last weeks subscription article in Navy Times by Andrew Tighman titled Carrier-Based Predator Floated.

A carrier-based predator equipped with advanced sensors could give the Navy an occasional alternative to using the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance aircraft, the large unmanned patrol aircraft slated to join the fleet in 2015, Cassidy said.

In addition, an armed Avenger could provide capabilities similar to a strike fighter or the Navy's Unmanned Combat Air System, the stealthy fighter jet in the early phases of development, Cassidy said.

General Atomics is hoping to sell the Predator to the Navy to supplement those other programs.

I don't think the Predator C would be a supplement, rather the Predator C has the endurance and range to be the repeater to the total battle network. Think about how naval aviation operations would work with the UCAS-N.

Say a flight of 4 UCAS-Ns are attacking a target 1000nm from the aircraft carrier. Say satellite communications are unavailable. How would the Navy conduct the strike? First of all the Navy is going to need a manned fighter to provide escort for intercepting enemy aircraft, not to mention EW support. Obviously the E-2D does not have the range nor would the Navy want to put the aircraft too close to the enemy, so something has to bridge the network distance between the E-2D and the UCAS. That is where the Predator comes in. It may be sexy to think of the Predator as a strike platform because the Reaper is successful in Afghanistan, but the Navy will need the Predator for C4ISR roles, in particular as a piece of the battle network able to successfully sustain communications over long distances to insure the E-2D and the decision makers on the carrier can communicate with aircraft 1000nm away even without satellite communications.

Battle networks of the future will be serviced by platforms that act as local network providers and repeaters, and if the Navy doesn't have the capability to organically support that network from aircraft carriers then the UCAS-N model is flawed. I don't think that network will be cheap, in fact I think costs potentially saved by replacing manned strike platforms with unmanned strike platforms will simply shift to become the costs of the supporting network. While cost neutral, there are still advantages of unmanned aircraft like range and endurance.

The Navy is going to gain significant improvements in quantity of information that can help develop the battlespace with unmanned systems in the air, on the sea, and under the sea. These systems are going to compound bandwidth challenges the Navy is already facing, and require not only local network providers to thin out the bandwidth requirements for collection, but will require significantly more data analysis in the forward theater to insure quantity of information results in quality of information. There are rumors the QDR may result in cutting the Command Ships from the US Navy fleet. I think that would be an enormous mistake, because the requirements for C4 in the future battle network are going to be significantly higher - not lower - and Command Ships appear to be the ideal platform for managing the future increased quantity of data on the network and turning it into useful quality information.