J-UCAS Canceled, But Not for Naught (Socialism Kills Another Military Program)

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.

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.

I have to disagree strongly.

Take the ABM system. for example. Sure, we are testing various platforms and we have deployed a few token ABM interceptors, but relative to the China ICBM threat, to Russia's new advanced ICBMs, to N. Korea's missiles and to Iran gaining nuke capability and the probable owner of longer range missiles soon, you would think we would have a much more robust ABM program. Read the current QDR and little is said about the ABM system. We fund African charity at a higher level than the ABM system.

We have retired the Peacekeeper, sliced the Minuteman III force drastically, taken four boomers out of service, taking another chunk of B-52s out of service, . . . yet the threats today exceed the threats we faced when these forces were at their peak.

We no longer have a Tactical Air Command and we no longer have a Strategic Air Command and we no longer have MAC. For all the crap we hear about "streamlining" and such, one of the big negatives that came out of the reorganization of the USAF (along with the other branches) is that there are no longer fights for funding among the various divisions of each military branch after all these "reorganizations", and so the funding for the "new streamlined" version is less. The social welfare funding is soaring and the military funding continues to shrink--Defense "streamlining" has fattened the funding for social welfare.

There is a disconnect now between threats we face and deterrent we muster. Social welfare has dominated the budget so much that too little is left over to fund the military. John F. Kennedy was able to spend 46-48 cents of every dollar on Defense. We had massive R&D programs and procurement in the early 1960s, even before Vietnam. Today, with the threats GREATER than what JFK faced (from multiple sources--JFK only had the Ruskies to worry about), George Bush is only spending 17 cents of every dollar on Defense.

You are implying that a military program will be funded if it would result in new and better capability, and I am stating that regardless of the worth of a program, we are hard pressed to fund it because social welfare is sapping up too much of our total budget--we just can't afford the programs we need to defend our nation.

SOURCE for budget stats: OMB Historical Tables

You'll get no argument from me that we spend too much on social programs. But the rest of your arguments imply the world and what drives its major powers hasn't shifted since the Cold War. During the Cold War, our biggest military rivals were driven by political ideology. The Soviet Union was committed to Communism and the goal of spreading Communism throughout the world. But we won that war. Communism failed. Its last surviving powers don't even really believe in it any more. Take a look at Hong Kong, Shanghai, Guangzhou etc, if you need evidence that China has ceded Communist ideology to Capitalist reality. China still wants to dominate the world, but the goal is economic domination, not ideological. China absolutely relies on its economic ties to Japan, the US and the EU to fuel its status as a world power. It cannot survive without the economic fuel provided by trade with those entities. Therefore, the threat that China will launch nukes toward any of those powers is about as likely as the threat that we will preemptively launch a nuke at China. So our ABM system must be robust enough to handle a nuclear threat with a lot less to lose. North Korea leaps to mind. You can be certain we have a very good grip on North Korea's intercontinental nuclear capability. And our ABM system based in Alaska is in a prime position to handle the threat.

We have reduced our strategic nuclear forces in part to comply with our obligations to various treaties, but also because we no longer need the capability to either counter a massive first strike by the Soviet Union, or overwhelm the defenses of a nation we plan on hitting first. It costs billions to keep those systems in a state of constant readiness that is no longer necessary in the scale it once was.

We no longer have a TAC, SAC and MAC, but that doesn't imply we lost the capability each of those commands represent. Instead, we dumped a lot of extra bureaucracy that did absolutely nothing to improve our combat capability or readiness.

"We had massive R&D programs and procurement in the early 1960s, even before Vietnam. Today, with the threats GREATER than what JFK faced (from multiple sources--JFK only had the Ruskies to worry about), George Bush is only spending 17 cents of every dollar on Defense."

Yet, with all of Kennedy's funding, we still couldn't gain the initiative in Vietnam. Obviously, there were many other factors involved there, but the point is, spending money does not equal a potent military. Iraq used to have the fourth largest military on the planet. Saddam starved his people to fund it. Look where it got them. The fact that George Bush is spending only 17 cents of every dollar on defense only highlights what we both agree on, and that is we are spending too much on social programs. But the fact that our military has accomplished historically unprecedented achievements in both Afghanistan and Iraq is proof that our military capabilities, planning and know how, are as good or better than they ever have been.

It's well known that it costs lots of time and lots of money to train a fighter pilot. It takes actual air combat to separate the aces from the skeet- and statistically, those are the only two divisions.
During WWII, both Japan and Germany had large numbers of first-line fighters at the close of the war. What they ran out of was skilled pilots.
Unmanned vehicles will allow us to fly extremely high-risk missions while protecting those expensive pilots from harm.
Also remember, a pilotless vehicle can pull a lot more Gs in a dogfight without danger of the pilot blacking out. And the weight of the pilot and his support systems can be replaced with extra fuel and weapons stores.

How come we can't find enough money to fund the Department of Defense, but every year we spend more money than we did the year before . . .

1] Raw dollars for Defense are rising, so it gives the false impression the money we are spending on Defense is increasing. However, if you adjust it for inflation, we have had a huge decrease in funding for the DOD. The easiest way to look at inflation adjusted dollars is to NOT look at raw dollars on the budget, but look at the % of budget each department gets form the 100% total of total spending. That is what I based my earlier post on when I said JFK was spending 46-48% of total on Defense but Bush is psending only 16% of total spending on Defense.

2] Much of the Defense budget is geared around the war, replacement parts, logistics, pay, etc. related to the war, and a far less percent of the total DOD budget is going for R&D and procurement. In JFK's time, not only was the amount spent for the DOD far greater, but a larger % of that went to R&D and procurement. Same with Reagan.

It takes actual air combat to separate the aces from the skeet- and statistically, those are the only two divisions.

I don't agree with you.

When I was instructing, it was very easy to determine who was going to be good and who wasn't. The kids coming into the RAG could all fly, and my job was to teach them to fly, fight and not run into the ground while trying to do the other two things.

What I fear we will get with drones are technicians instead of warriors. If some guy can sit with a cup of coffee while calling passing IP, I don't want him protecting my country. I don't want missions planned by some creep in Washington with a slide rule ever again, but that is what you will get when you take the human equation out of warfare.

It has to be dangerous and deadly so that those who practice it will remain at the top of their game. It is supposed to be high-risk, otherwise they would let anyone do it. That is what I am afraid of.

Thank you for the excellent paraphrase. The program I mentioned before has had something like $100M sunk in it, and it may need extensive redesign to fit into a fighter aircraft - and is likely to be too expensive to field even if it ever works (I believe it has had a 4-fold increase in unit price and more raises are likely).

Meanwhile, technology has progressed so that there are other options which might perform better, cost less - and be ready to field in 2 years on multiple aircraft. One of the intended using commands has pulled out, and the others may - not because of money, but because there are fundamental flaws that may be too extensive to fix. It may be literally time to go back to the drawing board!

My info is probably out of date. I had thought/read that a pilot has a very good chance of dying during their first few minutes of actual air combat. If they survive that, they stand a good chance of becoming an "ace." I'm probably thinking of WWI and WWII.
My basic point is, I'd rather we lose ten fighters than one pilot. We can replace machines.

Rather than "slide rule" types flying drone fighters, I'm picturing the top contenders in the annual "Drone Fighter" video game competition. Hardcore gamers will practice for eighteen hours a day or play for days at a time just for the sake of being "the best." Give 'em a catheter, Sobe energy drinks and M&Ms and they'll 'fly' 96 hour missions.

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