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Unmanned combat air vehicles: armed and dangerous
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| 03 January 2003 |
By Nick Cook, JDW Aerospace Consultant, London
The development of the unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV), as revolutionary as its technology is, is a mirror-image of the early evolution of the aircraft as a fighting machine. Just as modern combat aircraft owe their niche in today's military inventories to a time when pilots of scout aircraft started dropping grenades out of open cockpits, so the first operationally blooded UCAV, an AGM-114 Hellfire-equipped variant of the General Atomics RQ-1 Predator, happens to be an evolution of a platform designed originally for surveillance purposes.
First tested under combat conditions in Afghanistan during Operation 'Enduring Freedom' in late 2001, the armed version of Predator demonstrated its lethality again more recently when one of its Hellfire missiles blew up a vehicle in Yemen identified by US intelligence agents as carrying a number of senior Al-Qaeda commanders. Approval to engage the vehicle passed between the Predator's controllers and US command authorities within minutes. It would appear that the occupants of the vehicle had no idea they were under surveillance, let alone attack, when the missile struck. In the 'war against terrorism', this is the modern face of aerial combat.
The US armed services are far and away leading the field when it comes to UCAV development. Not only do they have an active UCAV in the form of the RQ-1/MQ-1 flying today - and a larger, more powerful variant, the MQ-9B Predator B, set to follow it into service during the next year - they also have dedicated UCAVs under development and a procurement strategy in place that should see the first of these vehicles flying operations before the end of the decade. The most visible initiative is the Boeing/USAF/US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency X-45A UCAV demonstrator programme, which is designed to lead to the in-service fielding of an A-45 UCAV possibly as early as 2008.
In October 2002, Dyke Weatherington, unmanned air vehicle (UAV) planning task force deputy leader at the US DoD, told attendees at a conference on UCAVs in London that the US budget for UAV/UCAV programmes had doubled between 2001 and 2002, was set to double again between 2002 and 2005 and would triple between 2002 and 2007. Since then, fiscal realities - and some lingering questions over how UCAVs should be deployed - have prompted the USAF to trim its UCAV acquisition budget, but this rebalancing notwithstanding, the writing is on the wall and companies are scrabbling to maintain or gain their places in this most cutting edge, and potentially lucrative, field of aerospace development and procurement.
"Air Combat Command believes that UCAVs have the potential to be transformational," said Capt Skip Stolz, UCAV requirements action officer for the USAF at ACC. Capt Stolz acknowledged, however, that much more work has to be done if the UCAV is to transition smoothly into service. While there is a good deal of confidence in the underpinning technology of the vehicles themselves, there is a great deal less certainty surrounding their roles and missions.
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