Unmanned Aerial Vehicles - A Perspective

I would like to start off by thanking Sir Alexander Shephard for having the foresight to sponsor this second UAV conference in the USA — a topical and important subject.

I also want to thank my good friend Ken Israel for the invitation to be here. I think he deserves great credit for assembling what promises to be a comprehensive two day discussion of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles from every angle imaginable.

Speaking of world UAV class experts, I must admit that I am certainly not in that category. Consequently, I have been struggling with how I, as a retired guy, could provide "value added" in my remarks given the previous speakers and the depth and breadth of discussion to take place over the next two days.

In that light and as many of you know, I have spent a good majority of my career both in the Air Force and now with the private sector in the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) arena. Accordingly, while I may touch upon UAVs as combat vehicles, my focus this morning will be on UAVs as sensor platforms, or rather more broadly on UAVs as part of a network or architecture of sensors and communications systems.

From personal experience, I can also testify to the fact that use of unmanned sensor platforms is by no means new. As an intelligence officer early in my career I remember well interpreting the take from a "Remotely Piloted Vehicle" (as they were called then), namely the Ryan Firebee Drone, nicknamed "Buffalo Hunter" program during the Vietnam conflict.

I can assure you the modern systems to be discussed in this conference are "not your father's UAV's." Let us just say that performance by RPVs in the Buffalo Hunter program in the 1960s was mixed at best.

As such, I'm reminded of the famous lines from Longfellow — "When she was good, she was very good indeed, but when she was bad she was horrid." This certainly applied to the UAVs of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

I am also reminded of the trials and tribulations of unmanned systems in the fight for legitimacy or acceptance over the past 20-25 years. And I remember vividly General Tom Stafford, former astronaut, who as head of R&D for the Air Force in the mid-1970s was a staunch supporter of the wider use of UAVs. We didn't make much progress then for a variety of technical, operational, and cultural reasons.

Nevertheless, the operational goals behind those early unmanned vehicles were, at their core, very similar to those we see with UAVs today.

That seems like ancient history today. UAVs are getting to be mainstream — they certainly are part of Secretary Rumsfeld's transformation agenda. The reasons are several:

• the technology has finally matured thanks to ACTDs and substantial investment;



• the operational experience in Bosnia and Afghanistan;



• and quite honestly an aversion to putting people at risk.

UAVs are showing great potential today, but the real promise is in the future.

I also want to tip my hat to the international members of the audience — understand there are 16 countries represented either by military or industrial personnel. I believe UAVs are a growth industry — and a worldwide industry. Accordingly to the December 6, 2002, edition of Aerospace Daily, the worldwide market for UAVs is $1.1 billion and projected to grow to $1.8 B in 2007. The opportunities offered by UAV technology for capabilities in the ISR arena are tremendous, and they are global. On the international front, the barriers to entry for building an effective ISR system have always been high. UAVs — which I think over time will decline in cost — offer an opportunity to change that constant. Having said that, I want to acknowledge that by and large my presentation is U.S.-centric.

What I want to do with my relatively brief time with you this morning is talk not about programmatics or performance of UAVs — I am sure those subjects will be well covered by folks more current than I. Rather, I want to talk about the very real challenge of finding the right combination of different ISR assets between manned, unmanned and space capabilities. This "right mix" of ISR capabilities clearly must be driven by our concepts of operations (CONOPS) which is informed by a structured Analysis of Alternatives (AoAs). Based upon those CONOPs, we prepared the requirements documentation. Next, we must develop system of system architectures which in turn provide the basis for our investment strategy.

One observation that I am sure you will hear repeatedly over the next two days is that we have entered an era in which the demands of the modern battlefield will require total battlefield awareness and hopefully predictive battlefield awareness enabled by modern ISR systems. What I would like to suggest is "three P's" that I think will be the keys to success on the battlefield in the future.

Those three P's are:

• Persistence,
• Presence,
• and Precision.

I note that my three P's vary slightly from the conference title. I am using presence rather than projection.

Those three words have certainly all be used before, and you are likely to hear more about them during this conference — especially persistence. What these words mean, their interrelationship, and the potential power of their linkage are important in providing a conceptual framework for the role of these ISR system in future crisis and conflict:

1. How we develop the concepts of operation needed to employ them
2. How we architect net-centric forces for the battlespace; and,
3. What we buy.

Persistence

It strikes me that you might find quite a spectrum of definitions for "persistence."

It could be revisit frequency. Obviously what we would like is to stare at an area "24 by 7" (or twenty four hours, seven days a week), in all weather conditions.

It could be defined in terms of results — or what persistence enables — such as the Holy Grail total situational awareness. Leading to predictive situational awareness.

Or it could be the space model of screening in a sampling fashion, revisiting, then overlaying when something of interest comes up.

Presence

We must then, however, add an idea of "Presence". Secretary Rumsfeld's highest priority is the global war on terrorism. The challenge inherent in that war, as he and others in the Department have continued to describe, is that we can't be everywhere, but we must be anywhere that demands our presence.

One also immediately thinks about the traditional measures of presence — for instance, an aircraft carrier on patrol offshore, or an armored division deployed in a friendly country adjacent to a hot spot.

I should add that the more I hear the need for presence mentioned, the more I am reminded of the USAF's "Global Reach, Global Power, Global Vigilance" motto. Here I am talking about Global Vigilance — ISR capabilities with its associated command, control and communications. To me, presence and global vigilance go together.

I think an important observation as far as our concept of presence and its evolution is that presence can now be either virtual (digital networking) and/or physical.

I would commend to this audience that ISR gives "virtual presence". If you have an extremely responsive, comprehensive (multi-sensor) presence in an ISR sense, you may be able to get away with not having to forward deploy in some situations or not to deploy as early. Additionally, that presence and persistence mean that in the event of crisis or impending conflict our forces always have a current understanding of the situation and, if deploying, arrive ready to engage.

Virtual presence enabled by persistent ISR also creates a form of deterrence. If you are staring at your potentially adversary continuously, his ability to mask his actions or deny his activities become increasingly difficult. On the other hand your leadership is always aware and can therefore also manage public opinion on the world stage — thus creating a deterrent effect.

Precision

And finally, the third "P" is Precision. In short, I would offer that this is the ability to be:

• On target.



• On moving targets (as well as able to characterize difficult targets such as those that are camouflaged, hard or deeply buried, etc.).



• And the ability to do both of those while minimizing collateral damage. When one thinks in terms of the increasing tendency of our adversaries to hide possible targets near, behind, or under civilian/non-combatant positions, not to mention the challenges of close-in urban warfare, the critical nature of precision is all the more clear.

I believe SECAF Roche and USAF Chief of Staff Jumper's "kill chain" — Find, Fix, Track, Target, Engage, and Assess — is enabled by the synergy of these three P's.

None of those "three P's" is new. The synergy was well demonstrated earlier this morning with Ron Sam's Predator linkages to C-130 and the resultant kills. Two other recent examples illustrate the power of linking these three attributes:

• In Operation Enduring Freedom, Global Hawk provided warfighter presence — sustained presence over an isolated geographic area for 25+ hours. In space terms, this is called "compressing your revisit time."



• A more recent example is the widely publicized use of a Predator to attack Al Qaeda members traveling in a car in the remote quarter between Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The Predator was piloted from hundreds of nautical miles away, and it hit the car with Hellfire missiles without causing collateral damage — Precision and Presence in action. This also illustrates the value of fused information to provide information to support the F2T2EA cycle.

OK — Those are the "3 P's." Let me now turn to a brief discussion of how one might think about achieving the right mix of manned, space, and UAV systems.

The purpose of this simple Venn diagram is to show the relationship and complementary nature of each of these systems. I will begin with space systems, which provide global access, a large footprint, a ready availability and, of course, is the most survivable component of the ISR triad.

UAVs provide very high resolution; can be employed in an unpredictable fashion; can be focused on a specific target area and depending upon the system can dwell over an area of interest or target for long periods of time. They also have the advantage of being relatively inexpensive and very importantly introduce no risk to personnel.

Finally, our manned platforms such as JSTARs, Rivet Joint, or AWACs introduce the advantage of humans in the loop with the attendant cognitive understanding and judgment. These platforms provide targeting, an ability to handle the unexpected, and finally function as a critical C2 node for other forces.

With the positive attributes also come LIMFACs, or limiting factors. While this list is entirely my own and may not be "all inclusive", nevertheless it is instructive as one considers the proper mix of systems.

Space — Space systems individually are clearly expensive to build and launch. As a consequence, today the ISR constellations are relatively few. Closely related to this is the fact that in the ISR business, one is always balancing data quality, revisit time, and sample rate where sample rate is measured in bits of data. Speaking of bits, space systems represent the largest source of data. However, to this point space systems are classic stovepipes and thus dissemination and integration continues to be a real challenge. The data from space is subject to concealment, camouflage and deception as orbits are predictable.

UAVs — While space systems have high acquisition costs, UAVs, due to their vulnerability, require planners to consider attrition costs. Depending on which UAV one chooses, duty cycles represent a real limiter. While the UAV can provide high quality, focused surveillance, its footprint is relatively small. This next LIMFAC — reliability — is an artifact of any new technology and clearly will be improved over time. Nevertheless, UAVs are not likely to become more reliable than their other two counterparts any time soon.

Manned — Platforms which have crews introduce a vulnerability which must be accounted for in the CONOPs. Compared to space systems, they have a limited footprint and thus often cannot see the deep targets. The duty cycle for manned aircraft has to take into account human endurance and consumables, thus by and large it takes several aircraft to sustain a surveillance orbit. And these orbits themselves are predictable. Relative to UAVs, manned assets — especially multi-use aircraft — have high acquisition and sustainment costs. Finally, manned systems by and large require regional basing.

This next slide is likely to be controversial and certainly violates the time-honored principle of conservation of enemies. That being said, let me press ahead undaunted and oblivious. With these attributes and limitations, one can construct a comparison matrix. Again, this is my opinion as to how these systems compare on a 1-3 scale (1 being the highest value). The factors, while not inclusive, nevertheless represent key parameters in judging the operational efficacy of these systems and the attendant resource implications.

Let me try to get off the stage with a comment on a few of the challenges facing the National Security Community. As we introduce UAVs into the ISR mix.

Maximizing the Kill Chain — As I began this brief presentation, I emphasized the interrelationships and complementary nature of these systems. This challenge deals with the question of "maximizing to what end." The complexity of modern warfare coupled with the compression of the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) loop mandates the synergistic integration and synchronization of these capabilities to achieve the desired effect

Developing the Tools — Tool development may seem a rather pedestrian challenge. Maybe it is the very mundane nature of tool development which explains our failure to invest in this area. Frankly, we are still evaluating these systems in a stove-piped, platform-centric manner and our models are not up to the task. On the other hand, I don't know how to understand the mix equation operationally or programmatically without the proper tools.

Multiple UAV Operations from the Same Ground Station/Platform — Again, you may think that I am "in the weeds" on this one. Frankly, I felt a need to have an interoperability bullet because I think General Jumper has it right. We must get out of the platform approach and have open-ended architectures, which would permit these multiple operations. That leads me to the next challenge.

Investing in the Complete System — This speaks to our propensity to focus on collectors and tangible platforms. Again, plaudits to the Chief's horizontally integrated Task Force approach. But we have a long way to go in joint C2, handling the data in a potentially unconstrained bandwidth environment coupled with the need to fuse multiple and diverse sources of information. As Gen. Jumper has said, "machine-to-machine interfaces is where we need to go." Finally, speaking of mundane but vital topics, beware of UAVs that have not been developed with sustainment in mind.

I want to leave you with one last thought and for those who know me — this won't come as a surprise.

Migrating ISR Systems to Space — As I've tried to illustrate, there are positive and negative attributes to the mix. I personally (and I want this to be understood as my opinion) believe that ultimately the ISR triad will become a "DIAD" consisting of proliferated and multi-function UAVs and spacecraft that operate together in a synchronized and integrated manner. Obviously I don't think that this imminent, but rather should be a goal — the timing will be primarily based upon technology maturation and resource considerations.

That completes my presentation. Again, many thanks to Ken Israel.

Thank you