"AUTONOMOUS ATTACKER - One of two Boeing J-UCAS X-45A unmanned aircraft lands after completing its first simulated combat mission and 50th flight last February at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base."
Posted on 07/10/2005 9:22:17 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Over today's battlefields, unmanned aerial vehicles such as Global Hawk and Predator are already showing their usefulness in gathering information for planners on the ground and, in limited situations, delivering weapons on targets.
The battlefield of tomorrow may see even more of these unmanned weapons systems, delivering initial strikes on well-defended targets and capable of working in teams and reacting and adapting to changing circumstances - all on their own.
That scenario is the ultimate goal of the Pentagon's Joint Unmanned Combat Air System, or J-UCAS, a program intended to develop and prove the technologies necessary to field such weapons systems in the not-so-distant future.
The fleets of unmanned, armed aircraft would be designed primarily to neutralize enemy air defense systems, operating in what battle planners call "deep-denied airspace," where the defenses are strongest.
"This is about dangerous. This is about where manned aircraft don't want to be," said Michael Francis, J-UCAS program manager for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.
Created in 2003, the program merged the separate efforts underway with the Air Force and Navy to develop their own unmanned weapons systems into one joint-service effort under the management of DARPA.
The Defense Department agency was already a partner in both unmanned combat aerial vehicle programs.
At the time, the Air Force and The Boeing Co. were well into development of the X-45A technology demonstrator. The program merger allowed for funding to continue that effort with a larger, "C" model of the vehicle.
On the Navy side, Northrop Grumman Corp. had built and flown the kite-shaped X-47A, designed for use off an aircraft carrier. The J-UCAS program allowed for the next step in that effort, the redesigned X-47B.
Fleets of these dart-like, stealthy aircraft are envisioned as working together - with or without humans' direct involvement - to provide the first wave of attacks against enemy defenses.
The vehicles themselves will be capable of operating with complete autonomy - free from the direct and constant control of human commanders - but with greater flexibility than existing autonomous vehicles such as Global Hawk.
Beginning a mission with a pre-determined plan, these aircraft will be able to use new information from a changing battlefield and react, even sharing information between vehicles.
Armed with sensors as well as munitions, the aircraft will be capable of gathering and transmitting reconnaissance and surveillance data, as well as electronic attack missions.
Ultimately, the aerial platforms may even be used for air-to-air refueling, acting as air tankers for each other.
At the center of the joint program is the common operating system, the "brains" that will be shared by whatever air vehicles are eventually used, even differing articles employed by the separate services.
In order to deal with today's integrated air defense systems, "our platforms need to come together and work as a team, with or without humans," Francis said.
With a common operating system, the all of the pieces of the weapons systems can communicate with each other, as well as the command and control, no matter which service. For instance, an Air Force ground station would be able to command a Navy air vehicle.
This shared software system is unique to military development programs, which typically focus on the hardware first, Francis said.
"We're building a weapons system with the airplane at the peripheral," he said.
This has the added advantage of making the software system isolated from the physical hardware, so one does not unduly affect the other. Francis likened the relationship to Microsoft Windows operating on any number of computer systems - if Windows has a problem, the hardware itself remains intact.
"We're trying to do the same thing with this class of (weapons) system," he said.
Northrop Grumman and Boeing are collaborating in the common operating system's development. Aiding in the effort is Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, acting as an integrator and broker to maintain the common configuration. The laboratory becomes the defacto integrator if the two industry giants can't come together, Francis said.
Their role also is to make sure that smaller, third parties get a fair hearing within the consortium.
"I believe we want the best we can get from industry and any other source we can find," he said.
While the program goals remain the same, the overall J-UCAS management is preparing to shift from DARPA to a joint Air Force-Navy office with the new fiscal year beginning this fall.
Program management roles are still to be determined, and it is not clear what role DARPA will play in the future, said Pentagon spokeswoman Cheryl Irwin.
"DARPA will continue to work technologies of interest to J-UCAS, and some of these could end up in an eventually operational (system)," she said.
The program management shift will not affect the program's funding or schedule.
Meanwhile, the effort continues in the hopes of maintaining momentum, Francis said.
The next version of the aircraft - Boeing's X-45C and Northrop Grumman's X-47B - is expected to begin flights in 2007, the effective start to assessing the operational use for the system.
This assessment is intended to provide the armed services with options that could lead to a decision for an operational acquisition program in 2010, Irwin said.
The X-45 and X-47 aircraft, together with the common operating system, are not necessarily the designs an operational UCAS will use. Their tests are intended to demonstrate the warfighting capabilites of these kinds of systems and aid the Defense Department in its decision whether or not to go forward with procurring such weapons and what shape they should take.
"This period of exploration is needed to understand what you want when you go forward," Francis said.
All of the initial envelope expansion flights of the two new aircraft will take place at Edwards Air Force Base, where the X-45A already flies. Some operational assessment will also be conducted at Holloman AFB, N.M.
An auxillary, but equally important, aspect to these flight tests will be to address operating these unmanned aircraft between restricted airspace and the civilian flyways, Francis said.
The Federal Aviation Administration confines operations of unmanned aircraft to restricted airspace, such as the area around Edwards AFB. Operations into the civil airspace require special permission.
The FAA, NASA and other organizations are working on means of safely granting routine access to the majority of airways to aircraft without a human on board.
"An (experimental) program like this is the perfect place to deal with it," Francis said.
"AUTONOMOUS ATTACKER - One of two Boeing J-UCAS X-45A unmanned aircraft lands after completing its first simulated combat mission and 50th flight last February at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base."
J-UCAS
I call 'em Mosque Busters.
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