Highly trained USAF UAV Pilots prang more than Army's

[MKSheppard]

Link

Official: Air Force losing more drones than Army
By Jeff Schogol, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Tuesday, April 28, 2009

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Air Force has lost many more unmanned aerial vehicles than the Army, in part because Army drones have the ability to land themselves, the Pentagon’s outgoing procurement chief said on Monday.

John Young, the undersecretary of Defense for acquisitions, technology and logistics, raised the issue Monday shortly before his replacement was sworn in.

While discussing problems with the acquisition process, Young mentioned that the Army and Air Force are not talking to each other about their unmanned aerial vehicles programs.

"The Air Force built a budget that didn’t include putting auto-land capability in their Predators, despite the fact that we’ve lost a third of the Predators we’ve ever bought, and a significant fraction of the losses are attributable either to the ground control station or the pilot’s operation of that ground control station, or the pilot’s operation of the vehicle," he said.

"Of the 65 mishaps, 36 percent are human error, many of those attributable to ground station problems, a Defense official said. "Roughly half of those happened during the landing phase."

Predators cost between $3 million and $4 million, Young said.

Army unmanned aerial drones have the ability to land themselves, and the Army has lost "an insignificant fraction" of the aircraft, Young said.

"I have mandated in acquisition decision memorandums that the Air Force move as fast as possible to an auto-land capability," he said.

With improvements to ground stations and the added ability for Predators to land themselves, Predator losses are expected to drop by 25 percent, he said.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently said unmanned aircraft are "a big part of our future" given their advantages over manned aircraft.

He mentioned the Reaper, an unmanned drone that can carry a payload of up to 3,000 pounds, compared to the Predator’s 500-pound payload.

"An F-16 has a range of about 500 nautical miles. A Reaper has a range of 3,000 nautical miles. A Reaper can dwell — has a dwell time over a target that can allow it to find and fix a target and then attack that target, by staying over it for a period of hours," Gates said recently at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I.

Also Monday, Young said he hopes a lighter variant of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle can give troops "most of the survivability" they need.

While MRAPs have proven effective in Iraq, their size and weight may restrict where they can go in Afghanistan, which does not have a developed road network. That is why Defense officials hope to field a lighter version of the MRAP known as the MRAP-All Terrain Vehicle by the end of the year in Afghanistan.

"My biggest concern is a lot of those MRAPs’ survivability is associated with weight," Young said. "I think we will have to have a good discussion with the user community about — you can have a vehicle that’s this light, and has this much off-road capability and all these other things and it has this much survivability, but I don’t know if we’re going to be [able] to get everything they want in that package."

[MKSheppard]

There's a HUUUGE fight brewing between US Army and USAF over drones.

Link

COB SPEICHER — A team of U.S. Soldiers made history when the unmanned aerial vehicle they were operating became the first Armed Warrior Alpha Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) to fire missiles in combat, Feb. 23.

Staff Sgt. Jerry Rhoades, Cpl. Phillip Cheng and Spc. James Pegg were operating the UAS, providing surveillance for U.S. and Iraqi ground troops in the Diyala province when insurgents engaged the Coalition forces.

“We neutralized both targets – [the ground forces] were satisfied,” Rhoades said.

Although systems operators are trained to deploy the weapons platform, this was the first time the Warrior Alpha System engaged a target in combat.”

“We know we have the capability, but we’ve never had the opportunity to use it before,” Cheng explained.

Task Force ODIN was activated in Iraq in 2007 as one of many initiatives to help defeat the threat of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and give Reconnaissance, Surveillance and Target Acquisition (RSTA) support to lower echelon field commanders.

Rhoades said using UAS weapon systems could help save time and lives.

“Say we see someone emplacing IEDs,” he explained. “If we can see it, our customer can see it, and they can call in a team to diffuse it - but that puts ground troops in harm’s way. If we have Hellfires [missles] on board, we can get authorization, take out the whole emplacement, and no ground troops get injured.”

Pegg said he hopes Task Force ODIN operators will be called upon to use Warrior Alpha weapons more frequently now that the system has proven effective in combat.

“I hope we do, and believe we probably will,” he said.

Rhoades agreed, saying, “We were happy to be able to be a part of it, and show the ground forces what we are capable of.”

Warrior Alpha by the way, is basically a US Army-ized version of the USAF's Predator Bs. The difference is, the USAF has a highly trained officer flying four of them at the same time; while the Army has a SSG fly it with a team.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Well, Shep, having one man operate four joysticks at the same time, an honourable pilot no less!, is an important component in the USAF's training programme to make its pilots the world's leaders in the two-prostitute jacuzzi lift.

[Darth Wong]

Is it just me, or is the inter-service hostility in the US Armed Forces downright childish? Why don't they just transfer the auto-land capability from one unit to the other, to cut down on the crashes?

[Lonestar]

Is it just me, or is the inter-service hostility in the US Armed Forces downright childish? Why don't they just transfer the auto-land capability from one unit to the other, to cut down on the crashes?

Because, it wasn't invented here.

Also, We're the Air Force, therefore we should control all aviation.

[Julhelm]

It's amazing how said interservice rivalry is allowed to go on and on through each consecutive generation despite the fact it has fubared more procurement programs than McNamara and Duncan Sandys combined. Why doesn't the government cut down on that shit?

[Intio]

Also, We're the Air Force, therefore we should control all aviation.

On the assumption that you're not being sarcastic, isn't that a rdiculously crude thing to say? The fact that the hardware spends its time in the air does not dislocate it from being intimately connected to what ground fores are doing and needing it for. Why should the medium of travel scalpel through the required coordination and dependency of ground forces?

[Julhelm]

That's the way the USAF usually operates: That's why they had the USS United States cancelled, it's why the USN doesn't operate a strategic bomber force anymore and why the army doesn't have fixed-wing CAS assets but have to rely on the USAF to fill a role they're not interested in performing.

[Starglider]

On the assumption that you're not being sarcastic, isn't that a rdiculously crude thing to say? The fact that the hardware spends its time in the air does not dislocate it from being intimately connected to what ground fores are doing and needing it for. Why should the medium of travel scalpel through the required coordination and dependency of ground forces?

Are you trying to apply concepts like 'objectivity' and 'overall effectiveness' here? The universal purpose of beaurecrats is to increase the size of their own department; headcount, budget and responsibilities. Working at the Pentagon if anything magnifies this tendency. Also, an unfortunate side effect of maintaining a strong 'esprit de corps' is military units believing they can do everything better than anyone else, from platoons up to entire services.

[Beowulf]

Is it just me, or is the inter-service hostility in the US Armed Forces downright childish? Why don't they just transfer the auto-land capability from one unit to the other, to cut down on the crashes?

Because, it wasn't invented here.

Also, We're the Air Force, therefore we should control all aviation.

You forgot: We're Air Force. We don't trust those auto-land things.

[MKSheppard]

On the assumption that you're not being sarcastic, isn't that a rdiculously crude thing to say?

RAF did it from the interwar period through (I think) most of WWII via having Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm be a branch of teh RAF -- the result was that British Naval Aviation was dealt a blow it never recovered from, design wise (their best plane was made by Grumman -- yes, I know about the Seafires; but those were sort of kludged conversions which rotted fast at sea and pranged well on landing approaches).

Post-war, there wasn't enough design expertise and institutional knowledge to build efficient and reliable naval aircraft; with the result that the RN's best post-war aircraft was the F-4 Phantom.

[Intio]

I'm almost half-way through reading "Bomber Boys" by Patrick Bishop. I shudder at the kind of inter-services bullshit that went on in the build up to WWII.

[Black Admiral]

On the assumption that you're not being sarcastic, isn't that a rdiculously crude thing to say?

RAF did it from the interwar period through (I think) most of WWII via having Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm be a branch of teh RAF

Actually, the Fleet Air Arm was given back to the RN in 1937, although if I recall rightly the Air Ministry was still in charge of aircraft procurement for the FAA afterwards.

[Broomstick]

Sorry, not a military aviation buff - is there a significant difference in missions between the Army and Airforce use of UAV's that might also impact loss numbers?

[Beowulf]

Sorry, not a military aviation buff - is there a significant difference in missions between the Army and Airforce use of UAV's that might also impact loss numbers?

Not really. The actual flights are relatively benign. No one's shooting back, after all.

[Broomstick]

Sorry, not a military aviation buff - is there a significant difference in missions between the Army and Airforce use of UAV's that might also impact loss numbers?

Not really. The actual flights are relatively benign. No one's shooting back, after all.

Really? No one has taken a shot at an UAV? That strikes me as being highly unlikely. Maybe no one has hit one, but no one taken a shot?

No, what I was thinking was that, even if they both are utilizing them for surveillance there might be a difference in altitudes used or some other factor that would account at least in part for the survival differences. It was pointed out in one of the articles quoted that equipping the USAF UAV's with auto-land would result in a 25% reduction in losses... implying that there would still continue to be significant losses due to other causes. As I am not familiar with the details of these operations I have no way of knowing if that might be due to terrain, weather, the enemy attempting to shoot them down, crossing the migratory pathways of birds, or something else.

[Aaron]

Really? No one has taken a shot at an UAV? That strikes me as being highly unlikely. Maybe no one has hit one, but no one taken a shot?

Global Security mentions that they can operate at 45,000ft:

The first Predator B prototype uninhabited air vehicle (UAV) was powered by a Honeywell TPE-331-10T turboprop engine, derated to 700 shaft horsepower, driving a rear-mounted three-blade controllable-pitch propeller. The Predator B was 36 feet long and had a wingspan of 64 feet, about 16 feet longer than the Predator. It was distinguished from its smaller cousin by its Y-shaped tail, with a ventral vertical fin. It was designed for a maximum gross takeoff weight of 6,400 lbs. The first turbine-powered aircraft built by GA-ASI, the Predator B was designed to fly as long as 25 hours at up to 200 knots indicated airspeed at altitudes as high as 45,000 feet, while carrying payloads of up to 750 lbs. The aircraft were designed to meet Federal Air Regulations Part 23 requirements.

So far above the envelope of small arms fire and anecdotally, friends who have been in the sandbox tell me that half the time you don't even know it's around.

No, what I was thinking was that, even if they both are utilizing them for surveillance there might be a difference in altitudes used or some other factor that would account at least in part for the survival differences. It was pointed out in one of the articles quoted that equipping the USAF UAV's with auto-land would result in a 25% reduction in losses... implying that there would still continue to be significant losses due to other causes. As I am not familiar with the details of these operations I have no way of knowing if that might be due to terrain, weather, the enemy attempting to shoot them down, crossing the migratory pathways of birds, or something else.

I think the answer is right in Shep's comment:

Warrior Alpha by the way, is basically a US Army-ized version of the USAF's Predator Bs. The difference is, the USAF has a highly trained officer flying four of them at the same time; while the Army has a SSG fly it with a team.

USAF has one guy flying four and the US Army has a team flying one. That to me sounds like an accident waiting to happen.

[Sea Skimmer]

The US Army, but not the Air Force, has some small drones which fly very low, sometimes, easily within the envelope of small arms fire (indeed often too low for MANPADS to work). However nearly all those small drones except the tiny RQ-11 Raven have the capability to climb to at least 10,000 feet, thus making them near immune to any kind of insurgent ground fire. When they do fly low, the small size and low noise make them very hard to notice before they’ve already flown past.

But it should be pointed out that while insurgents have basically not shot down anything, the Serbs in 1999 shot down around two dozen drones of various models including several Predators. Iraq also shot down several Predators with fighters and SAM batteries. The Serbs knocked down the big ones with SAM sites, but found that the only effective counter to the small low flying drones was to chase them down with armed helicopters.

The US militaries own solution to enemy small UAVs has been to study the possibility of simply building our own small kamikaze UAV that can cruise around waiting for a target to come by, and then serve as the worst crappiest (and cheapest) SAM.

Note while the USAF does have one Predator pilot fly four Predators at once that pilot isn’t quite alone, he has one enlisted man per drone working the camera turret and telling him when the drone needs a course change (autopilot can make it go in a straight line, or circle, but not much else). Still dumb, and the reason its necessarily is because you need at least three pilots per Predator for the whole mission (which can be up to 24 hours) so by forcing the one guy to manage four at once the USAF can avoid needing literally hundreds of such pilots with 3 million dollars of training apiece. Still, the USAF does not have enough Predator pilots and has no idea when it will meet its requirements.

[Sea Skimmer]

Is it just me, or is the inter-service hostility in the US Armed Forces downright childish?

That’s what you get when each service has to justify its budget line by line directly to the US congress and explain why it should get to use that extra half billion they found by changing toilet paper contractors.

Why don't they just transfer the auto-land capability from one unit to the other, to cut down on the crashes?

The autoland system works in conjunction with a ground based radar which must be present and calibrated at each operating location. Said radar needs its own ground crew ect.. so its not like this is just a modification to the drone.

What’s truly dumb though, is Army and Air Force Predators are flown out of the exact same facility, nearly side by side, at Nellis Air Force Base in Los Vegas.

[weemadando]

Air Force Blues does regular spiels on UAVs - this is probably their most recent and most amusing. It also highlights one of the exact reasons why the AF act so weirdly about stuff. Because of ego.

[Starglider]

The autoland system works in conjunction with a ground based radar which must be present and calibrated at each operating location. Said radar needs its own ground crew ect.. so its not like this is just a modification to the drone.

There is already a GPS-based autoland system (based on a locally deployable version of WAAS). That should offer autoland capability better than even Category III-C conventional ILS and requires just one small transceiver station. It's been in development since 1999 and was originally supposed to replace conventional ILS in all military applications by 2010, though I don't know what the actual deployment schedule is.

[Broomstick]

Really? No one has taken a shot at an UAV? That strikes me as being highly unlikely. Maybe no one has hit one, but no one taken a shot?

Global Security mentions that they can operate at 45,000ft:

I won't dispute that, however, "able to operate at 45K feet" is not the same as "routinely operated at 45K feet".

The aircraft were designed to meet Federal Air Regulations Part 23 requirements.

You mean these FAR Part 23 regulations, correct? Distilled down to one sentence, that means the military UAV's are built to the same specifications and structural soundness as people-carrying airplanes.

So far above the envelope of small arms fire and anecdotally, friends who have been in the sandbox tell me that half the time you don't even know it's around.

That statement is more in line of the information I desired - how high are they normally flown, how visible to people from the ground, etc.

I think the answer is right in Shep's comment:

Warrior Alpha by the way, is basically a US Army-ized version of the USAF's Predator Bs. The difference is, the USAF has a highly trained officer flying four of them at the same time; while the Army has a SSG fly it with a team.

USAF has one guy flying four and the US Army has a team flying one. That to me sounds like an accident waiting to happen.

Just off the bat, yes, that is a significant difference. However, the type of mission may be as significant a different. 4 drones circling points of interest at 40,000 may not require the constant attention of a pilot if those drones are virtually undetectable to ground based enemies and are flying a fixed course with nothing the vicinity to pose an obstacle. On the other hand, flying at 5,000 to provide ad hoc observation and troop support is a different matter entirely. You have to know how the machinery is being used. You also have to know during what phase of flight the machines are being lost - take-off, cruise, maneuvering, landing...?

If there is a shortage of UAV pilots that is also a problem - if the USAF is flying more UAV's in absolute numbers and doesn't have enough personnel to truly cover them all that is an additional factor to consider, and one which autoland capability will not entirely compensate for. The skills required to fly an aircraft via remote are not quite the same as those needed to fly while sitting in a cockpit. That is, in no way, an argument against autoland or further automation of UAV's but rather my pointing out that the problems here may go well beyond crash landings.

[Aaron]

I usually hear 10000 feet but none of the guys I keep in touch with are Air Force, Skimmer or Beowulf would likely know more. Apologies about the lack of quotes, I'm not on a pc right now.

[Lonestar]

On the assumption that you're not being sarcastic, isn't that a rdiculously crude thing to say? The fact that the hardware spends its time in the air does not dislocate it from being intimately connected to what ground fores are doing and needing it for. Why should the medium of travel scalpel through the required coordination and dependency of ground forces?

No. Historically the USAF has done it's best to sink other services major aviation programs, and doesn't like the idea of being bomb-trucks for the Green Services(hence the repeated attempts to retire the A-10). If the USAF were to be believed, the could fight every war out there from US Territory or from allied air fields. We don't need no steeenking Aircraft carriers!

Now the USAF is cheesed off because Army Aviation doesn't have the kind of ego-investment that USAF aviation does, so the Army had no problem paying for auto-landing software(I can't imagine much more hardware would be needed for that capability), because, after all, the Army doesn't have fighter pilots. Add this to the Army gaining it's own organic fixed wing support, and UAVs being the wave of the future...it isn't something the USAF likes.

[Intio]

So you've provided more detailed, and interesting, facts about the issue: but doesn't the original point still stand?