Posted on 02/20/2006 7:59:06 AM PST by Dont_Tread_On_Me_888
US Navy Capt. Ralph Alderson, program director of the Joint-Unmanned Combat Aerial System (J-UCAS) program, said right at the start that he would address the elephant in the room.
The FY07 defense budget provides zero funding for the J-UCAS, and the newly released 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) calls for the program's "restructuring," as many of the attendees at the Association of Unmanned Systems International's Unmanned Systems Program Review 2006 conference in Washington, DC, on Feb. 8 perhaps already knew, Capt. Alderson said.
"Restructuring" would appear to be a euphemism for "canceled," but despite standing at the podium with a PowerPoint presentation for a program now in limbo, the J-UCAS program director said not all is for naught – that there are many lessons learned which can be applied to the restructured program, the exact nature of which is still to be determined.
"The Navy will be developing a long-range UCAV [unmanned combat aerial vehicle]. That is the sum total of what I can tell you," Capt. Alderson said. "The impacts are still being worked pretty hard. But we're still committed to getting a good solid demonstration done, so we can pass lessons learned to the Navy."
Seen as a future family of US Air Force and Navy UCAVs employing unmanned aircraft as large as F-16s, the J-UCAS program was supposed to develop unmanned vehicles able to perform a variety of missions, including deep strike and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (see "Drones That Sting"). But Ryan Henry, the US Defense Department principal deputy undersecretary for policy, said in a presentation on the QDR that the J-UCAS program is being restructured to include an air-to-air refueling capability and "more options for payloads and distance."
Asked if the J-UCAS program would essentially be folded into a still undefined US Navy long-range UCAV project, Capt. Alderson would say only that "there's a lot of discussion. We're not seeing an Air Force element, so it looks like the Navy going forward." The J-UCAS program, among other things, did not plan to allow aircraft carrier "cats and traps," or catapulted takeoffs and trapped landings, yet carrier survivability is the Navy's highest priority, Capt. Alderson said.
Prior to the announced restructuring, the J-UCAS program had completed more than 60 test flights of the Boeing X-45A vehicle, culminating in August 2005 with a demonstration of preemptive destruction suppression of enemy air defenses (DEAD) involving two X-45As. Tests also included dropping a GPS-guided weapon, simultaneous control of two X-45As by one operator, and the transfer of control over two vehicles while in flight to another control station 900 miles away.
The two X-45B vehicles funded in October 2005, representing a $40-million funding cut in the program that reduced the planned vehicles from three to two, were to have been delivered by March or April, with a first flight in 2008. Yet another iteration, the X-45C, was to have delivered three vehicles carrying the GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) for the purpose of developing software for effectively controlling weapons, with tests to have begun in 2007.
A representative from Boeing Air Force Systems, the developer of the X-45 vehicles, said the company couldn't comment on the future of the J-UCAS program, because it has not yet received any official word from the Air Force on its status.
Capt. Alderson said that during the course of the J-UCAS program, he has had difficulty making clear in briefings to senior leaders in the Pentagon that the central challenge J-UCAS was intended to address was the in-flight autonomy of mission planning, not simply the autonomous control of the aircraft. Mission planning was supposed to be the heart of the J-UCAS, capitalizing on network-centric capabilities that would permit multiple aircraft to work together on various kinds of missions. Capt. Alderson said his own personal lessons learned from J-UCAS include the understanding that the "affordability" of unmanned aerial vehicles is often overstated, that the payoff is in the operations of the aircraft and not its acquisition.
I did functional test in the lab on that autopilot. Killed me thousands of fake passengers :D It is a solid piece of hardware though nowhere near cutting edge in terms or raw horsepower. Most avionics is not due to heavy cert requirements.
F-117s are OLD and '52s much more so. You can ALWAYS keep around a ton old hardware for the same cost as just a few of the new stuff. This has been true since the dawn of time.
Yeah, but not quite. Things are different when both target and targeter are moving in 3 axis. With a runway, or even a moving carrier, you have a predictable or stable bearing to target. In-Flight Refueling requires coordination at a speed I don't see a computer being able to handle soon. Speed is not the problem, but the time it takes to recognize a situation, translate it into a transmittable signal, have that signal recognized on the ground by the pilot, have the pilot put in the correct control input, have that input transmitted back to the aircraft, and finally have the aircraft respond to the ground input before the condition changes.
I think the ground pilot will always be a bit behind the aircraft, just because of the latency factor. My eyes and ass will tell me what to do in the cockpit 100 times faster than anyone on the ground can transmit those messages up to a remote piloted aircraft.
If you factor in inflation, the cost of one F-22 is cheaper than the cost of one F-14 was in 1970. Also, the F-22 is 10 times cheaper to maintain today than a Tomcat was in the early 80s WITHOUT factoring in inflation.
In response to leftist critics, Lyndon Johnson insisted that we could have both "guns and butter," which was how this budgetary choice was phrased at the time.
Of course, he was wrong. The Great Society effectively built in a long-term guarantee of federal bankruptcy, without doing much of anything to alleviate poverty.
Anyway, as far as Delta, I think they are getting exactly what they deserve. Stupid leadership and stupid unions add up to a stupid airline. Both sides are to blame, and yeah, I mean the pilots too. The day I became eligible to take the money and run, I did.
If you want to run a profitable airline today, you have Southwest and the great Jet Blue for examples on how to do it.
Disagree. The USAF is pushing for UAVs hard. My guess is that J-UCAV wasn't going the direction the USAF thinks it needs - but I would bet majority opinion in the USAF right now is that the F-35 will be the last manned fighter.
Programs get cancelled for lots of reasons. I'll be going to a meeting soon on a program that was grossly oversold, has taken 6 years to make 2 years of progress, and doesn't meet the actual needs of anyone in the field. And at the moment, it isn't flyable still.
Sometimes programs go awry.
See, that is where we differ. To me, the sound coming from a GE-90 is beautiful, all that kinetic energy barely in check behind the cover, the hum of the blades, I just love it.
All newer aircraft have their FMC variations, but essentially they can take you from N1 to touchdown with very help from me. Sometimes, all I got to do was rotate with the yoke, and then it was switches and dials the rest of the way.
I pinged Rokke because he is new to the modern FMC on his big MD-11, and he is in a better position to describe them.
I don't think this is the case.
Regardless of techical issues, this program is our key UAV program. If the money is available, you make improvements to the program. New software, new engine, new whatever, . . . If the money is availble, you just prototype a new model or variant. At some point in the future, UAVs will be a major platform. This program was our developmental program. Since UAVs will play some role in the far off future, or even the major role, then if the money is available, you keep improving the developmental program up until the time full scale production is ripe.
This program is being killed for the reasons I stated--there is no money! The cost of welfare and charity, and the points I made in #14 are the reasons why the program is being killed.
Socialism trumps the defense and security of the USA.
Again, money is the problem. The USA is finding it impossible to fund the military and have advanced new tech programs for tomorrow. Social spending is soaring, and it is killing the ability of the USA to fund R&D and advanced weapon systems.
...only that the Virginia-class attack subs have been variously described as scaled-back Seawolfs (Seawolves? That's kinda like Toronto Maple Leafs, isn't it?) That doesn't suggest that there was a black program, only that the Navy couldn't afford the Seawolf-class SSN's.
OTOH, the original M1 Main Battle Tank was also described as a cheaper MBT-70. It's much more than that now.
I take your point.
With regard to UAV's...the technology and capability in this area is moving faster than most development programs. But UCAV's are already flying CAS missions and doing it very well. The only thing about CAS that hasn't changed dramatically in the last 10 years is why we do it. In a complete reversal from a few years ago, the most effective environment to execute a CAS mission is at night. The current state of our avionics and the equipment available in the air and on the ground makes CAS in the dark almost a no-brainer. In a brief summary...the forward air controller (on the ground or in the air) defines the coordinates of the target (using laser range finders and GPS these coordinates can be incredibly precise). He transmits those coordinates to the close air support platform (manned or unmanned). Whoever is flying the aircraft directs his infrared equipped targeting pod at those coordinates and verifies he sees what he is supposed to target. To confirm, he zaps it with an infrared laser beam and asks the controller if he is targeted correctly. Then, with approval to drop, he guides a laser guided bomb onto the target that almost guarantees a kill. We've come a long way...and in the process have greatly reduced the need for an actual person to be in the cockpit of the delivery aircraft. This isn't just theory. It is being performed in practice. And new technology is refining the practice on almost a daily basis. Already, we are able to beam imagery from the orbiting platform directly to the guys on the ground, giving them control of what is being looked at. Obviously, the next step is giving them control of dropping the ordnance.
Which takes us back to canceling this (X-45) program. The reason air to air refueling capability wasn't included in the initial specs was because it didn't seem realistic. But then, neither did a UCAV performing CAS. I suspect that much of the X-45 testing program has been overtaken by other programs. That has happened frequently throughout the history of various X-plane programs. You can be sure if we still had questions or strong interest in the capabilities being tested by the X-45's, the program would still be funded.
Correct.
LBJ & Congress did a "guns & butter" policy during the Vietnam War years.
Bush & Congress are doing the same.
It was not sustainable, and the war spending/effort lost back then.
Imagine the Dem's are more fiscal & responsible now, at least enough to not oppose any Repub efforts to trim socialist programs?
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