Early in February the U.S. Navy took what may well turn out to be a revolutionary step forward in unmanned-aircraft development when the prototype X-47B made its first flight. It is slated to be the first carrier-based unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV). Unlike similar unmanned vehicles currently in service, it is not a low-performance airplane suited only to the benign environment U.S. forces currently enjoy in Afghanistan. Instead, it is an attack bomber whose stealthy design should allow it to survive in the face of the most sophisticated opposing systems. As such, it is likely to be valuable over the full range of scenarios, not only the counterinsurgency ones typified by the war in Afghanistan. On the other hand, because it is unmanned, it can have the sort of endurance that makes UAVs like Reaper so valuable in the current conflict.
The X-47B was designed not only to operate from a carrier flight deck but also to be refueled in flight. For a manned airplane, endurance is often equated with fuel capacity, but in reality the controlling factor is pilot fatigue. In several cases in Southwest Asia, tired pilots have killed friendly forces. The worst aspect of fatigue is that the victim usually does not realize what is happening. Judgment slips; some functions just are not carried out. How much has been lost is obvious only afterward, when something happens (or fails to happen).
An unmanned airplane overcomes pilot fatigue, but only if it does not have to be flown continuously by a remote pilot. The Air Force, for example, assigns a pilot to each of its UAVs. Much of the effort in X-47B design has gone into a different kind of control system. The aircraft flies itself from waypoint to waypoint. If for some reason it deviates, the controller sends it a new set of waypoints, but at no time is the X-47B directly controlled by a joystick. This type of control was adopted specifically so that a group of X-47Bs could operate together under the supervision of one or a very few controllers. Their type of supervision makes it simple to switch from controller to controller, so that there is no problem of remote-operator fatigue comparable to pilot fatigue. The remote controllers, moreover, can spend more of their time concentrating on the evolving mission of the UCAV, and that in turn should reduce information overload.
If this problem seems too abstract, note that recent disasters in Afghanistan, in which civilians were inadvertently attacked, have been traced back to gross information overload. Usually the key information was “somewhere in the system” but those controlling the strikes were too overloaded to examine it. Reducing their direct-control load should make a considerable difference. To the extent that success in Afghanistan depends heavily on civilians’ belief that our operations are in their interests, this sort of unloading is extremely important. UAVs currently in service were conceived as remotely piloted aircraft; they do not unload their operators.
Beware the Swarm
The X-47B is intended to operate not as a stand-alone airplane but a member of a swarm. Targeting commands, for example, would go to the swarm as a whole, its members communicating back and forth to decide which is best suited to execute the required attack. A swarm has other interesting capabilities. Its members can return to a carrier one by one to rearm, or to a tanker to refuel, so the swarm as a whole can form a persistent air presence. The airplane was given an inherently stealthy design (which is why, for example, it has no vertical control surfaces) specifically to enable it to survive for an extended period in the face of enemy air defenses. The swarm becomes a kind of virtual carrier much closer to targets than the carrier herself. At the very least, it must attract intense enemy air attention, and it can be used to destroy enemy aircraft seeking it.
Remarkably, much of what is desired has already been demonstrated. If the X-47B is seen not so much as an airplane but as a reusable missile, its swarm-and-attack concept is clearly an extension of Tactical Tomahawk. The most striking difference is that a shipboard or shore computer decides which of the swarming Tomahawks will attack a given target. Carrier aircraft already land nearly automatically in bad weather, and UAVs often take off and land automatically (and apparently more reliably than when they are manually controlled). Simulated automatic air-to-air refueling has been demonstrated, and appears more reliable than manually controlled refueling. Only carrier-deck operation has not been demonstrated.
Thinking of the X-47B (and other UAVs and UCAVs) as missiles rather than as unmanned airplanes has further implications. Current aircraft spend much of their time flying training missions to keep pilots proficient. That may mean daily flights for carrier pilots, both when they are at sea or ashore between deployments. More aircraft are used to maintain a training pipeline. In a golden past, carrier aircraft were inexpensive—and expendable—and they were bought by the thousands. The main procurement cost of a carrier was the ship itself. By about 1970, however, the rule of thumb was that two-thirds of carrier procurement cost was the airplanes (two full air wings over the life of a nuclear carrier). Airplanes have become more expensive since then, to the point where the cost of U.S. tactical air power is now being questioned. The British carrier air arm has been stricken, perhaps fatally, by the need to cut costs by pulling back from the short take-off/vertical-landing version of the next-generation strike fighter, the F-35.
The Economic Factor
Buying a UCAV does not mean buying a cheap alternative to real manned airplanes; a production X-47B will probably cost about as much as a production manned fighter. The difference should come in how many are bought, and in how many hours they fly per year (which determines maintenance cost). Missiles are one-shot weapons. No one demands proficiency firings, so the number bought is set by the number which are to be deployed at any one time (they may be cross-decked as ships return and others deploy). There is little or no training pipeline of live missiles. Requirements are based on expectations of what will be needed in war rather than on filling out a force much of which is not deployed at any one time. An operational UCAV version of the X-47B test vehicle would seem to offer exactly such economies both in procurement and in life cycle.
Just what the Navy will do with the X-47B depends on how well the test program progresses. The UCAV may be seen as another special-purpose carrier aircraft, to be operated in small numbers. For example, given its inherent stealth, it may be seen as the “day one” attack weapon to open the way to more conventional airplanes such as F/A-18s. However, the economics become interesting only if the UCAVs replace many of the manned attack airplanes. In that case, total purchases of such aircraft are substantially reduced. The cost of filling and operating a carrier will be correspondingly much less, particularly if calculated over the 50-year life of such a ship. Savings might be enough to buy and operate more carriers.
That may become increasingly important. After 9/11 the U.S. Navy rethought its operating patterns because it was suddenly clear that the country might have to respond simultaneously to many more uncoordinated crises. Alternative types of naval striking forces, such as expeditionary strike groups, were created not because they were particularly desirable, but because the carriers could not be multiplied; for much the same reason the U.S. Navy fielded battleship-centered surface action groups during the 1980s, when clearly there were not enough carriers to execute the war plan.
Over the past few months, much of the Middle East, including many supposedly stable places, has exploded in popular protests at existing corrupt and generally repressive regimes. For the Navy, the great lesson has been the surprise and the geographic spread of the unrest. The service has been spared embarrassment because, as of late February, there was no need to intervene in any of the countries involved.
However, that may be coming. In virtually the whole region, the regimes now under siege (or, in Egypt, overthrown) had backed the United States with policies (i.e., regarding Israel) that were deliberately not justified to the populace. It is not difficult to imagine populist regimes coming to power and, as in Iran, seeking to expel the United States and its influence. We may well find ourselves fighting to extract Americans or to protect where they work, for example in oil fields. The U.S. Navy will be the only practical means of intervening, and there is not enough of it. If we avoid the storm this time, the lesson will be that we need more ships and, because of their unique abilities for sustained striking action, more carriers.
In the X-47B the U.S. Navy may well have found a way to make that larger fleet affordable.