Promising outlook for Navy's unmanned aviation.

• Author: Martin, Antoine
• Position: Unmanned Systems

ANALYSIS

The U.S. Navy has ambitious plans to deploy new families of unmanned aircraft over the next decade.

Rear Adm. Dewolfe "Chip" Miller, director of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ER) capabilities in the office of the deputy chief of naval operations for information dominance, called the Navy's unmanned aviation model a hybrid.

It partly follows the Air Force model of "ISR reach back," which means sending data collected by aircraft 4.0 sensors back to network nodes for analysis. It also takes after the Army model of tactical ISR by bridging the information forward to the fighting unit.

Interoperability will be a significant challenge for the Navy, however. The Navy has not yet tightly integrated its unmanned air systems (UAS) within ship operations, and that is needed in order to effectively operate the UAS that will work in conjunction with manned aircraft, radars and weapon systems. The integration of UAS within a common operating picture will take time and money.

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Budgets could be a factor in whether current programs survive. A case in point is the cancellation of the Navy's medium-range UAS program in February. That was just days after senior Navy leaders mentioned that requirements remain valid. The Navy had budgeted $1.2 billion.

Of the current naval family of UAS, the broad area maritime surveillance (BAMS) aircraft is the largest investment by the Navy to date, and its most important unmanned aviation program.

The current MQ-4C BAMS-D, a demonstrator, is a limited version and has performed well, but is coming to an end. BAMS will make its first flight this fall.

The program has two goals: maritime patrol and reconnaissance, and persistent maritime ISR. The Navy needs more maritime ISR, and its P-3 and P-8 manned aircraft won't meet that need, which leaves it up to BAMS to fill the gap. It should be operational in 2016, and 68 aircraft are to be delivered by 2022.

The Navy expects to reduce costs by pooling resources with the Air Force's Global Hawk. The Navy had to look hard at reusing and leveraging what the Air Force had already acquired.

An important characteristic of BAMS is that a sense-and-avoid payload has been developed. This is an important technology that could be adapted for other aircraft in the military inventory.

There are still questions about the operational concept of GAMS. Aviators have criticized the fact that the airframe will suffer great stress as the aircraft...